One Day I'll Wake Up
by TeresaAmaliaJane
Summary: A Vegas casino owner is murdered, Lisbon's hiding something and Jane makes it his mission to figure out what. Jisbon and slight Grigsby. Chapter 10 is officially fixed. Please R&R!
1. Vegas

_My first fanfic, so don't be too hard on me! I intend to make this multi-chapter, my version of what will happen to everyone in the end. I've got a pretty massive idea in my head, but I'll only continue if anyone wants me to. _

_I don't own the Mentalist or anyone associated with it._

**Chapter 1: Vegas.**

Silence hung heavily at the CBI building that morning.

Senior Agent Teresa Lisbon had risen from her desk and glanced out her office door three times now, to be met by three identical pictures. Grace Van Pelt occupied one of the four desks in the room, filling in paperwork, her long auburn hair cascading to the middle of her back. Kimball Cho was seated at the desk opposite her, lost to the outside world as he worked his way through yet another book, his expression never changing. In the adjoining room, visible through a glass wall, Wayne Rigsby searched the cupboards and the fridge for something remotely edible, his tall, broad figure seeming enormous compared to the small fridge beside him. It was a picture of dull normality, or at least it would be, had it not been Lisbon's team. Any other Senior Agent would acknowledge these moments with satisfaction, there being no victim, no grieving family, no ending to piece together. Any moment without thought of death at the CBI was worth being satisfied about. But Lisbon wasn't satisfied; incidentally, she was mentally bracing herself.

She turned her head to observe the fifth member of her team. Patrick Jane, horizontal on his couch, his blonde curls tussled ever so slightly by the air conditioner, his eyes closed. Lisbon leant against the frame of her office door and crossed her arms, knowing all too well that Jane's façade was simply that, a façade. It had been almost two and a half years since they'd met, and if there was anything she'd learnt in that time, it was to never accept what he let show on the surface. Jane had been uncharacteristically quiet and secluded the entire morning. Any average human being who had ever met Patrick Jane would consider this a good thing. But when the man 'slept', it sure as hell didn't mean his mind did. If Lisbon were to guess, she would say he was planning something.

And that was definitely not a good thing.

The shrill blast of a telephone dragged her from her thoughts, and the team jumped at the sudden noise. Cho set aside his book and answered it. As he did, the couch creaked softly as Jane 'woke up', a thud of footsteps announced Rigsby's return to the room, and, just like that, the eerie silence faded into everyday sound.

Lisbon tilted her head over her shoulder and smirked.

"I see you've finally decided to join the living."

"Better conversation," Jane replied, having moved across the room and leant against the opposite wall, his expression glinting with something she somehow felt she wasn't supposed to see. She noticed the bags lining his eyes and the weariness in his demeanour, and wondered how long it had been since he'd slept. She knew Jane had insomnia problems, which was understandable considering, but she couldn't remember it ever being this bad.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Jane grinned, though it didn't quite reach his eyes, and she searched them for any possible explanation. They hadn't had a Red John case for at least six months, nothing particularly gruesome, the usual motives and she couldn't imagine that having anything to do with it. But at that moment Cho put down the phone, and she forced her thoughts to the back of her mind.

"Got a case, Boss. Vegas," Cho told her.

Her fists clenched.

_The smashing of glass woke her up.  
"You can't keep doing this to us!"  
"I just…"  
"…I can't!"  
Thud.  
Silence._

It took Lisbon a couple of seconds to remember how to breathe, and to realise the team was waiting for her to talk. She slowly unclenched her fists, arms folded, and felt a little colour return to her face. She opened her mouth to speak, and was relieved to discover her voice gave away nothing.

"Get your things," she ordered the team. "It's a five hour drive, so bring lunch."

The team did as they were told, and Lisbon turned and headed back into her office for her bag, willing the hallucination from her mind. She had to be professional about this, it was what she was paid for. She could only hope that Jane had been so wrapped up in his plans or his fatigue (she couldn't be bothered wondering which it was anymore) that he hadn't spun his usual crap and fabricated a story that would, as usual, hit not too far from home.

Sometimes she wondered why she bothered to hope.

"Don't like Vegas, huh?" asked an all-too-familiar voice from the doorway.

She ignored him, reaching for her badge and shoving it into her bag.

"You know, it's not healthy to bottle up your emotions, Lisbon."

"Hypocrite," she muttered. Silence.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you're an ass."

"Very funny. No, really."

"Jane, there is a dead body waiting for us."

"Oh, yes. How silly of me to forget."

" Do you want to hitchhike to Vegas?"

"_No, Ben, please…" _

_Smash._

She closed her eyes, hearing the dull thud of the floorboards as Jane took a step forward.

"Why do you flinch at Vegas?"

"You tell me, you're the one who knows everything."

"Oh, I have a theory. I want to hear your excuse. Why the grudge?"

"How about the fact that you'll be there in five hours?"

"Come on, Lisbon, we both know that's a terrible excuse."

"It's a perfectly good excuse."

"And I believe it because?"

"Because it's true."

"What's the real reason?"

Lisbon spun around and glared.

"Because I own a gun, Jane. Do you really feel like being shot today?"

She didn't bother to wait for an answer.

* * *

It had been an incredibly boring drive, Jane decided. Nothing to see, the road stretching out for miles, promising dead grass and run-down farms for at least another half hour. He glanced over his shoulder at Cho, Rigsby and Van Pelt, ignoring their obvious leg cramps in the back seat. Van Pelt because it wasn't professional to complain, Rigsby because it would make him seem less of a man to Grace and Cho simply because he was Cho.

Jane turned to face the road again, but not before stealing a quick glance at Lisbon. She'd been staring straight ahead without a word for the past four hours, which he would have interpreted as frustration with him, had the vein in her neck not been twitching and her knuckles been a healthy colour as she gripped the wheel. The truth was, he had no answer to why she hated Vegas. If he were to guess, he would blame a childhood trauma, perhaps a brief foster home stay somewhere near. But Lisbon was not the kind of person to be haunted by something such as this. She'd let it out for a moment, alone, if only to give it air, and then compress it back into the folds of her mind until it lay all but forgotten. It wasn't healthy, as he'd pointed out earlier, because sooner or later the darkness would burst from it's shell. Sooner or later, her strength would destroy her, that much he was sure of.

Then again, he thought as he resumed staring out the window, who was he to judge a person on their past?

_A faint wave of fear overcame his stomach._

_The key in the lock.  
Everything was fine.  
The house had not been disturbed.  
He didn't smell blood._

_Twist._

_Turn._

_Breathe._

Jane closed his eyes, and took his own advice. In, out. He relaxed his hands, knotted together subconsciously, and forced his thoughts back to Lisbon, the fabulous view of nothing, anything but the memory that had been haunting him all morning. Lisbon had called him a hypocrite, and about an hour ago, he'd realised that she was right. But it wouldn't change things. He'd still follow the usual plan; annoy the hell out of her until she let him in that little bit more and he could immerse himself in her problems and forget his own for a while. Because he was going to get to the bottom of Lisbon's grudge, and if it meant leaving his cold world for the time being, then all the better for him.

They weren't that dissimiliar, actually, he noted, as once again he rested his eyes on her. No matter how much Lisbon would loathe and deny that fact, she couldn't ignore that they both were anything but innocent. Neither had experienced any fragment of an orthodox life to date. And they both 'bottled up their emotions', as he'd called it earlier. Though there was one difference in that- Lisbon clearly felt it necessary to mask her pain for the good of her team; she did it because it would be unprofessional not to, because she was the strong one, the fearless leader. But when _he _did it, smiled the darkness away and threw himself into the case as hard as Lisbon did, it was translated as being reckless, immature.

He preferred to think of it as being helpful.

Jane didn't realise that half an hour had passed until the setting slowly became more colourful, the landscape dotted with a few suburban houses, the outskirts rushing by. Lisbon weaved the CBI car through the streets, heading for the city, and Jane observed her as she drove. He was surprised to find that her cheeks were a healthy pink, not the pale white he'd come to expect. It had taken her most of the drive to fully calm herself down, and the beginnings of the city did nothing to alter her calm. That was interesting; it seemed she associated the word Vegas with a certain memory or place that had no relevance at present. He filed the thought away for future reference, and found relief in the fact that he was breathing normally again as well. The memory had retreated to the back of his mind for the time being, and he fully intended to keep it there.

A few blocks before the true city of Vegas reached them, they turned right down a side street. It had the appeal and the vibrance, but somehow seemed to promise a noticeably quieter night than the main stretch. The buildings all appeared relatively expensive, decorations well-made, the majority hotels or casinos. Lisbon turned the car into the car park of what seemed to be the largest structure in the street. A large neon sign reading "LAVA" rested dully against one side, waiting for night, for the moment when it would light up the entire neighbourhood. The black car slowed to a still in it's park, and the team opened the doors and stretched gratefully, all but Lisbon, who probably didn't need to, considering her height. She'd opened the case file that Minelli had given her before they'd left, and just before she began to read, the vein in her neck began to twitch again. Jane looked over his shoulder at the building for a millisecond, found it to give the air of both a hotel and a casino, and turned back before she noticed. She was hardly likely to dislike hotels, so that left the casino, he thought. Lisbon hated casinos. He smiled softly to himself; he was definitely going to have fun figuring out this one.

"The victim is Sam Tyler," Lisbon read, speaking for the first time in five hours, he noticed. The team began to walk as she spoke. "Thirty-four years old, Caucasian male. Owns this place, found in his room here with multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. Married with two children, the wife lives a few blocks from here."

"Jealous rival?" Grace thought aloud.

"We'll see," Lisbon replied, although Jane thought it unlikely. When a victim was murdered at work, it was rarely about work. Murders like this were generally the result of an affair, power gone to the head, creating an illusion of immunity and resulting in having too much fun and denying there being any consequences until karma shot you in your own hotel room. He followed the team into the building, hit by the atmosphere before he'd even set foot inside, and wondered whether people with power ever lived a full life.

He doubted it, and it irked him for reasons he didn't understand.

_Again, I'll only continue if you want me to, and if you do, please review!  
Constructive criticism is very welcome._

_Jess xx_


	2. Heather

_Sorry it took me so long to update; it took me forever to work out the details of the case. Probably should have done that earlier. Anyway, Chapter 2 is finally here, so enjoy. Let's just pretend, for the sake of this story, that Bosco never existed, Minelli hasn't retired and Grace and Rigsby aren't together yet, okay? Review if you like, if you don't like, if you love, if you hate, if you marry or if you want to burn it. Much appreciated._

_I don't own the Mentalist or anyone associated with it._

**Chapter 2: Heather.**

Grace Van Pelt had only been in a casino once before, in her college days. She had been, of course, younger and more spontaneous than she was now, which was the main reason she'd eventually forgiven herself for doing such a thing as gambling. Prostitutes, gang members and middle-aged overstressed human beings feeling the need for escape, all with the same distorted illusion in mind that they would walk out the door rich beyond their wildest dreams. It never occurred to them to get a job, a stable source of income. Grace sighed. She felt for these poor people, she really did, but sometimes she wondered whether any of them possessed a brain.

LAVA's hotel lobby was as she'd expected. The general three to four star interior, comfortable and neat, yet falling short of the glamour of floorboards, painted walls, a bell on the front desk. Instead, there was a blue-green carpet lining the floor, slightly clashing with the baby blue wallpaper. A table Grace took for the front desk stood to the side of the room, a clerk typing nonchalantly on a computer. Unoccupied chairs lined the walls, which was understandable, as it was day. Grace guessed that come nightfall, the bar and casino would attract hundreds of tourists and locals, getting their share of the Vegas atmosphere.

The hotel clerk stopped typing, glanced up at them and looked about to offer assistance when the elevator on the opposite wall opened and a short, stocky man in police uniform appeared, noticed the agents and approached.

"Agent Lisbon?" He looked to be in his forties, his features lined and weary as though he'd seen one too many corpses, witnessed one too many grieving families. Grace smiled politely as he shook Lisbon's hand, and as Lisbon introduced the rest of the team.

"I'm Officer Jeremy Cain. Body's upstairs, can we walk while we talk?" He was very direct, no beating around the bush, Grace noticed. He looked like he would have started walking regardless, and so he and Lisbon headed back toward the elevator, the rest of the team following.

"Wondering why you crossed the border for a case, Agent Lisbon?" Cain asked as the elevator doors closed. He punched the button for the fourth floor, and Grace began to feel the usual light-headedness as they left the ground floor below them.

"I was told it was related to a cold case of ours," Lisbon replied after a moment. Grace observed her quietly; she was no Jane, but a five-year-old could tell that her Boss was out of it. In fact, she'd been a little off beat the entire day. She glanced at Jane, who was staring at Officer Cain; maybe not looking at Lisbon at that second, but Grace knew that if any one of the team had any idea as to what was going on, it was Jane.

Cain sighed and scratched his neck.

"That sounds about right," he muttered. "Would have been nice if we'd figured it out sooner, though. Hours before some meathead linked it to one of yours. Called the Department, patched straight through to-who was it-"

"Minelli?" Grace offered.

"Yeah, that's the one," Cain glanced at her briefly. "He told me one of his Senior Agents had worked the case last time, told me her team was the best and that my men should be honoured to work with them."

Grace's insides warmed at the praise. It always made her hold her head that little bit higher when the team was highly spoken of, and she knew from Lisbon's expression that she did too.

"Tired, Officer Cain?" asked Jane unexpectedly from the corner, and Grace couldn't help but think that he'd ruined the moment. Cain looked him up and down over his shoulder, seemed to detect no threat, and shrugged.

"A little. Been here since 5am. Believe me, early morning calls are not the most enjoyabe part of the day."  
"Oh, I believe you. Kicked out of your own bed, sleeping on the couch for, what is it, five days straight? Operating on nothing but coffee, I'd assume. Perhaps you should just be honest with her, I'm sure she'll forgive you, given time."

Cain tensed, as did the entire team. He turned slowly to face Jane, his fists clenched.

"What did you say?" he asked slowly, threateningly.

"I'm simply suggesting that you be a better husband."

The atmosphere in the elevator was suddenly deadly and the silence thick as Grace glanced at Rigsby fleetingly. He returned her glance, his eyes slightly wider at Jane's statement, and she diverted her gaze back to Cain nervously. Would he start a fight in an elevator, an officer of the law? Her eyes flickered to Jane, who seemed cheerful and confident as always. There was never any point in trying to restrain him from his antics; Lisbon had been the only one to ever come close, and today she simply stared at him like she didn't have the energy to fight. Grace was briefly saddened by the thought, and then her eyes returned to Cain, who had seemed to restrain himself for now, and before he had found words suitable for his cause, the elevator stopped and the moment passed as the team poured out.

The hallway they encountered was laden with the same colour scheme as the lobby downstairs. Doors lined the walls, numbered in gold. There was no question as to which room was Tyler's; the door had been fully removed, and two officers dressed in the same uniform as Cain stood discussing something in the doorway. One of them glanced toward the elevator, abruptly ended the conversation and strode over. He introduced himself as Officer Lake, and Cain (standing as far away from Jane as possible) added that he'd been the one to link the cases.

"Something was bothering me about the case from the start," Lake explained as Cain led the way to Tyler's room. "Seemed like I'd worked the case before, or something. Halfway through the morning, I realised that it reminded me of something I'd seen on the news at my sister's in Sacramento. It'd be a few years back now. So I told Boss," he nodded at Cain, "who granted me access to the case file. Casino owner, found shot in his hotel room, just like we have here. And get this-the killer was never caught."

"You think we're dealing with a serial killer?" asked Lisbon, as they crossed a neat looking living room. Forensics appeared to have been and gone, for the most part; the room smelt of various chemicals and materials regularly used at a crime scene, and both this room and the adjoining bedroom appeared deserted except for a few men finishing up on the scene, including the man who had been talking to Lake before.

"Anything's possible," answered Lake as they entered the quite spacious bedroom. "This is Vegas, don't forget."

Sam Tyler's body lay sprawled over a double bed now splattered with dried blood. He was naked apart from baby blue boxers and a thin silver wedding band on his finger, and his eyes lay open in surprise as he stared vacantly at the ceiling. Three gunshot wounds to the chest seemed to be the obvious cause of death, close together and so from close range, no more than a few feet away. Grace leant down over him and noted the coolness of his skin, as well as it's colour.

"Time of death was around 15 hours ago, give or take," she concluded after a moment.

Jane meandered through the group to lean over the body next to her, and Grace could almost see his senses buzzing aroung him. She'd watched Jane's powers at work before, and it never ceased to amaze her how he could fathom the victim's personality from one or two small details that everyone else seemed to miss. His eyes wandered slowly over Sam Tyler's every detail, his own expression never changing, or changing too quickly for her to see. She could never tell.

"Matthew Donovan," Lisbon's voice suddenly pulled Grace from her half trance, and she turned to face her Boss, who was staring slightly off into the distance. Beside her, Cain nodded.

"Sacramento, three years ago."

"One of the few killers we couldn't pin," Lisbon half smiled, then perhaps thought better of it.

Grace turned back toward Tyler, and images of a television screen began to filter through the windows in her mind. She'd been an agent in training at the time, and had seen the official report on the news one night. What had scarred her wasn't the victim or the way he died; it was the terrible, defeated expression on his wife's face as she faced the stream of reporters, faced the fact that her husband would never come home. She'd never felt more sadness than she had for that woman. And the knowledge that the murderer had escaped without consequence..it had shaken Grace mentally, and increased her determination to be a cop, to save that fragment more of the world.

Suddenly, she'd wanted nothing more than to solve this case. If not for Sam Tyler, than for Matthew Donovan's wife.

"What now, Boss?" she asked suddenly, her enthusiasm undeniable.

Before Lisbon could answer her, Officer Cain's cell phone rang, and he excused himself to take the call in the living room, gesturing for Officer Lake to follow, which he did. As soon as the two men had left the room, Grace heard Rigsby let out a breath of relief.

"They're _gone_," he smiled, his voice barely audible.

Grace shot him a disapproving look, while Cho showed the beginnings of a smile as he turned to Jane, who was still examining the body.

"Boy, I actually thought he was going to kill you," he stated.

Jane straightened and grinned, his eyes flashing with amusement, though Grace was yet to discover what he found amusing about being threatened every day.

"He wouldn't have killed me in front of Lisbon," he answered off-handedly. "What a strong romantic impression that would have made."

Lisbon did a double-take, and Grace witnessed her transformation as she escaped the light daze she'd been in all day. Her eyes focused on Jane and she snarled threateningly, her infamous death glare aiming straight for him. Grace recoiled slightly; this was the shortest she'd seen Lisbon's temper in a _long_ time. She idly wondered whether Jane would rather be the target of Cain or Lisbon at that moment. She knew she'd choose Cain, choose life.

Jane's only reply was to raise his hands dramatically in surrender, his smile unwavering.

"He was all over you, my dear. What was I supposed to do, ignore it?"

Officer Cain chose that exact moment to enter the room, and all eyes turned to him as he hesitated in the doorway. Grace imagined his surprise; they were CBI officials, 'the best', according to Minelli, and just look at them. Lisbon was standing defiantly, shooting daggers at Jane, who still had his hands raised, grinning at Cain; Grace simply stood there, unsure of what to do next, and she knew Cho and Rigsby were the same. Cain began to smirk, most likely at the fact that it was Jane copping it. He then disturbed the amusing scenario by changing his expression to one of impatience as he held up his phone and addressed Lisbon.

"Just got a call from the Department," he announced. "Double homicide of twin fourteen-year-old girls, a few blocks from here. My men are headed for the scene already. We're understaffed at the moment," he sighed, "a lot happens in this bloody place. We're willing to fully transfer the case over to you guys, with your consent. It'd help us out a lot."

"It's okay with us," Lisbon replied, and Grace could almost see Rigsby's inward grin. Cain smiled and began to search through his phone, before disappearing and returning a moment later with a notepad and pen. He copied a number down and a name, and handed the pad to Lisbon.

"This will get you access to everything we've uncovered. Forensics, notes on the victim, evidence, interviews, whatever. It's all yours. Ask for Macey, she's the best." Cain pocketed his phone.

"Garlett and Blake will take the body after you're done," he added, indicating the two men in the living room. "Good luck on the case, agents. I hope you find the bastard."

Cain then turned and strode hurriedly out the doorway, exchanging words with either Garlett or Blake as he passed.

"Sweet dreams, Officer," Jane called out innocently after him.

Lisbon tensed, but for the most part seemed to ignore this one, Grace noticed, and she was grateful.

"Set loose in Vegas," Rigsby thought aloud, smiling. "This is going to be fun."

"We're investigating a _murder_," Boss countered, "don't get your hopes up. Jane, Cho, go find out the wife's thoughts. Rigsby, you're with me, we're going to see the hotel manager.."

"Will you ask him why there's no clocks in any of the rooms?" Jane asked, denying any explanation as to how he discovered it by looking through only one room.

"I'll be sure to find out," Lisbon replied sarcastically. "Anything else incredibly useful that you've noticed?"

"He's been married once before," Jane voiced, "and his first wife mothered the children. Loves his kids, torn between life in the fast lane or life with his family."

"How do you know that?" Grace asked him, slightly in awe as she always was at times like this.  
Jane pointed to Tyler's ring finger.

"There's a slightly differing tan line impression underneath the wedding ring," he told her. "Therefore, he's worn two. The boxers are a strange choice for a hotshot casino owner, don't you think?" Jane smiled. "Baby blue boxers, same colour as the walls. There's something about blue that draws him. His children are obviously both boys, imagine the amount of blue in the house when they were young. He doesn't want to let go of the past, of when he was with his first wife, before she.." Jane faltered a little, "..died."

Grace acknowledged his sadness and observed him quietly. Now that she thought about it, Jane had seemed a little off this morning, too. She smiled sadly at him, not quite sure of what was hanging over both his and Lisbon's heads today, but hoping that whatever it was would fade away soon and the team would be back to normal.

After a moment, Jane recovered and the usual grin began to light up his face again.

"Onward, my dear Cho," he announced loudly as he began to head towards the door. Cho shrugged and followed slowly after glancing at Lisbon, who nodded. Grace then realised something.

"Boss, what do you want _me_ to do?"

Lisbon turned to her.

"Look into 'LAVA', it's reputation, financial records and anything in between," she ordered. "Then call Minelli and get the case file for Donovan's murder. Something tells me we'll need it." Boss then looked down at the notepad Cain had given her, before handing it over.

"And call this number, too. Get everything they have on Sam Tyler."

"Don't forget to ask for Macey," called Jane from the living room, and Grace could almost see his smile.

"She's the best."

* * *

"Your tea, Mr Jane."

Kimball Cho glanced up from where he was seated on an old leather couch, his left foot resting against his right knee, as Heather Tyler handed Jane the cup of tea he'd politely requested five minutes earlier. Her house was cosy and warm; the colours soft on the walls and the furniture comfortable, well-loved. Or at least, that's what Cho thought. The room probably screamed 'affair' to Jane; everything else did.

Heather herself looked to be in her early thirties, tall, thin and frail looking as she perched lightly on the opposite couch, tucking a strand of light blonde hair behind her ear. Her eyes were red from crying, her movements shaky, as though she were in shock. She clasped her hands together in her lap as she took a deep breath and tried to pull herself together. After a moment, she managed a small smile at Cho, who reunited his left foot with the floor and leant forward.

"Mrs Tyler," he began, "we're sorry for your loss, but we do need to ask you some questions regarding your husband's murder."

"Ask away," she replied in a shaky voice, crossing her legs as she did so.

"When did you last see your husband?" Cho asked. This question was always one of the hardest to answer, the families recalling the last time and suddenly realising that it would be _the last time_. Heather Tyler was no different, breaking eye contact to look at her hands before replying.

"Yesterday morning, around eight. He was heading to the hotel," she closed her eyes and sniffed, "but I did talk to him on the phone at around nine at night, maybe? He let me know he was going to stay the night. He had his own room for when it got too late. Said it'd disturb me and the kids if he went banging around the house at those hours." He voice softened a little and she smiled to herself at the memory.

Cho pressed on, knowing from experience that it was better simply to get it all over with.

"Did he have any enemies? Anyone who might want to kill him?"

"The hotel was getting good business. He probably made a lot of people jealous." Heather suddenly uncrossed her legs, and her voice was slightly stronger as she looked Cho straight in the eye.

"But if you want my guess.." she leant forward, "..Tom Jackson."

"The hotel manager?" It was possible; with Tyler gone, 'LAVA' would most likely now belong to Jackson. Cho had dealt with many cases before in which a successful man had been murdered for his power, and Sam Tyler had certainly been a successful man.

Heather nodded.

"Tom's been the manager since the beginning. Sam trusted him, but I've never liked him much." A single tear escaped her carefully constructed mask and rolled down her cheek. Cho was about to ask the reason for her dislike when the front door could be heard swinging open, and two boys in school uniform entered the room a few moments later, talking incessantly to each other. They looked to be about ten years old, and they were quite obviously twins. Heather Tyler wiped at her face and painted on a smile as they appeared.

"Boys, can you go to your room for a second, please?" she asked them, her voice stronger than before but a little uneven in parts. One of the boys looked up from a handheld game and locked eyes with Cho. Cho returned the gaze and contemplated smiling, but as he did the boy broke eye contact and whispered something in his brother's ear. Then both of them turned and ran out of the room, noticeably quieter than before.

"Sorry about that," Heather muttered, her smile vanishing as quickly as it appeared.

"I apologise, Mrs Tyler, but I have to ask, where were you on the night of your husband's murder?"  
Heather closed her eyes for a second, before nodding slightly and opening her eyes. "I was at my cousin's house in Sloan," she replied, "and the twins were at a friend's house.

"Your cousin have a name?"

"Nathan Whitlock."

Cho filed the names away into the folds of his mind. As he did, he noticed Heather subconsciously twist the wedding ring on her left hand, and wondered if it possessed any significance whatsoever. Then he remembered Jane was in the room, and decided he didn't need to bother.

"Nice kids," Jane commented, as if on cue. Heather smiled at him briefly, her eyes shining.

"They seem drawn to you, and a child's body language never lies," he continued, "and they accepted you as a mother immediately, no doubt."

"However," the tone of his voice changed, "You're not fully allowing yourself to connect with them. Why is that?"

Heather blinked twice, lost for words as she stared at Jane, who gazed innocently back at her before continuing.

"My guess? You feel guilty. You blame yourself for Sam's murder. You tell yourself that if only you'd persuaded Sam to give up the casino, then he'd still be alive. And you were so close, weren't you? He was considering it. You hate yourself for not trying harder. And the twins, who are practically your sons, but never quite will be, love you unconditionally, even though it's your fault their father is dead. That frightens you, doesn't it, Heather?"

Heather stared at Jane for a moment, her eyes wide, before lowering her head to hold it in her hands. She sighed, her body trembling and then shaking slightly as she began to cry.

"It's all true," she managed in between sobs. If Cho were an emotional person, he would have made some effort to comfort her, perhaps shift couches to rest his hand on her shoulder or soothe her with comforting words. He knew for a fact that's what Van Pelt would have done. However; he was not an emotional person, and so he gathered his thoughts and stood.

"Thank you for your time, Mrs Tyler," he told her, before gesturing to Jane and heading for the door.

"Thanks for the tea," he heard Jane say behind him. The only reply was Heather Tyler's sobs racking her body uncontrollably.

Once outside, the two men headed to the black CBI car and Cho opened the door to find himself in the passenger seat, although he could have sworn that hadn't been his intention. Jane offered him a mysterious grin before starting the engine and reversing out the neatly groomed driveway. As the car began to gather speed and head back to 'LAVA', where the rest of the team currently were, Cho drummed his fingers along the edge of the window as Jane whistled cheerfully.

"So have you figured it out yet?" he spoke after a minute or two.

"Figured out what?" Jane asked as he brought the car to a slow at a stop light.

"What's up with Lisbon."

"What makes you think there's anything wrong?"

"My eyes were open," Cho replied dryly.

Jane chuckled and turned to face Cho, his expression eventually fading to one of all seriousness as he thought aloud.

"I'm not sure," he admitted, "it's probably something from her past, but I can't be certain yet. She's not being very helpful." He frowned slightly at the thought.

"Has it ever crossed your mind that maybe she doesn't want you to know?"

"Of _course _she wants me to know. Don't be ridiculous. The only thing Lisbon has ever wanted me to do is my job, right?" The light then turned green, and Jane eased the car into a right turn.

"I'm a Consultant. I consult, I give advice. There's something wrong with Lisbon, and she_ needs advice_. Therefore, if I do nothing, I'm not doing my job."

There was the usual slightly irritating cheerfulness in Jane's voice, but there was also something else, something not as upfront, but most certainly there. It took Cho a few moments to identify it as worry. Jane was worried about Lisbon. Cho almost smiled at what she would think if she knew that, or if she heard Jane's explanation for his prying. He felt an unexpected urge to shudder, and looked over at Jane, who's eyes had returned to the road.

"Whatever, man, it's your head."

Within five minutes, the black car had found it's original place in 'LAVA's parking lot. A colourful sunset basked the world in orange as Cho and Jane opened the doors and entered the hotel lobby once again, took the elevator up to the fourth floor and met Lisbon in the hallway.

"Discover anything useful?" she asked.

"Heather Tyler doesn't own a clock," Jane replied.

"Oh, you think we're dealing with a clock thief?" she retorted, before turning to Cho.

"Anything useful and _relevant_, please, Cho."

Cho filled her in on everything Heather had told them. When he reached her accusation of Jackson, she nodded.

"Jackson was definitely next in line for the place. Told us so himself. So far, he's our top suspect," she stated, and Cho agreed. Jackson murdering Tyler for ownership to his rising hotel casino seemed a very believeable enough motive. All they had to do now was prove it.

"Boss," began Rigsby as he approached with Van Pelt, "it's five thirty. Please don't say we're driving back tonight."

Lisbon glanced at him and smiled; amused, Cho assumed.

"Jackson has offered us five rooms on the house for tonight," she announced, and Rigsby sighed in relief, as did Van Pelt. Cho himself was glad not to have to pile back into the stuffy CBI car for another five hours; his legs had been killing him.

Lisbon then instructed Rigsby to go collect the bag of spare clothes in the car. Agents were required to take spare clothes on interstate trips, in case situations like this ever occurred. Rigsby happily conformed. Lisbon then produced three room keys and handed one each to Cho, Jane and Van Pelt.

"Are all the rooms the same?" Jane asked as they began to walk.

"Yes, Jane," Lisbon replied wearily.

"Except for Tyler's."

"Jane, if you keep it up, your room will look like Tyler's."

"Even the body?"

"_Especially_ the body."

Cho followed behind them and listened to their bantering (as did Van Pelt), losing count of the amount of threats Lisbon's words contained and wondering whether any of them had reached Jane. He knew by Jane's grin that they hadn't and probably never would. He had never been able to figure out whether Jane was stupid or smarter than them all in his attitude toward the Boss, although right now, going by Lisbon's expression, he would definitely opt for the former. He recalled what he'd said to Jane earlier, and wondered just how right he'd been.

"_It's your head."_

It hadn't been a metaphor.

_So, there we go. Holy god, that was a long chapter, it was never meant to be that long.  
Reviews are like chocolate, sticky and yummy and they make me happy._

_Jess xx_


	3. Silence

_So, Chapter 3. I forgot to mention last chapter, thank you so much to everyone who's reviewed so far! You've absolutely made my week, and you've motivated me to write faster; I stayed up until one in the morning last night, typing this. That's late for me. But I'm happy with this chapter, it was a lot of fun to write. If you don't like it, review; if you like it, review! Easy enough stuff to remember._

_I don't own the Mentalist or anyone associated with it._

**Chapter 3: Silence. **

_The gun felt powerful in his hands, soft and smooth as he gently caressed the trigger. The room was serene as thin strips of moonlight filtered through the window and cast a translucent glow over the outline of a man sleeping peacefully in his bed. He stood silently, his smile invisible in the darkness as his eyes swept over every crevass in the man's form, savouring the moment. The anticipation. The thrill. He couldn't wait any longer, the adrenaline sure to destroy him if he didn't act now. He reached out a hand and flicked the light switch on, and didn't even blink when the room flared alive. The bed creaked softly as the man was thrust to consciousness, as his eyes fell on the gun trained on him and as he felt around on his bedside table for a weapon that had been removed a long time ago. _

_His smile __became a grin, and he uttered two words before firing three times._

"_Goodbye, Sam."  
The body flipped onto it's back upon contact with the bullets, the blood already beginning to pool around it, seeping through the blue sheets. Blue. Oh, how he hated blue. Now that he owned the place, the colour scheme would definitely be changed. He lowered his gun, his faint chuckle echoing throughout the room, and was about to throw the walls back into darkness when a voice startled him._

"_Tom!"_

_Heather Tyler stood before him, having materialised from God knows where, her face stained wth her tears, her hair a mess. _

"_How could you! How could you kill Sam! After all he's done for you.." She began to shriek, throwing herself at him hysterically, the tears never ceasing their cascade down her cheeks. Overdramatic bitch. He should shoot her there and then, and then she would be with her pathetic husband, and he would never have to hear her irritating voice again. He caught hold of her arm as she thrashed against his side, and slowly lifted the gun to her temple. He pulled the trigger for the fourth time that night, and stepped back to admire the life fade from her eyes as she died._

_But __then he hesitated, as the eyes themselves began to change colour. Fading to a rich hazel, locking their gaze with his as he witnessed her nose lengthen, her cheeks acquire a healthy pink, her teeth straighten. Her wispy, blonde hair growing at an alarming pace, darkening, thickening, until it was a breathtaking chestnut red, falling to her waist.. blood streaming down her cheeks like tears, her beautiful, beautiful eyes rolling back in her head as she crumbled to the floor.._

_He took a__nother__ step back, and he began to scream._

Wayne Rigsby's tears stained his shirt as he sat bolt upright in his bed, a thick layer of sweat covering his skin as his heart threatened to explode. After a moment, he remembered how to breathe, and drew his knees to his chest as he stared into the darkness silently. It had been a hell of a long time since he'd been this scared, and after a moment of pure relief that Grace was still alive-that he hadn't killed her-he realised it had also been a hell of a long time since he'd been this embarrassed. Nightmares? What was he, eight? Still, he couldn't stop himself from finding the switch of the lamp on the bedside table, and glancing around the room for a smile, a gun, a body. The room was exactly the same as in his dream, which didn't help, and though he knew all the rooms were identical, he still pictured the door as the one he'd stood in front of as Tom Jackson, still pictured this bed as the one Tyler had been shot in…

Rigsby leapt out of bed and stood shakily, knowing he wouldn't get any sleep for the next three hours at least, if at all, and especially not in this bed. He didn't know whether he could ever sleep again, and wondered whether the fact would be much of a problem. Jane seemed to get along just fine. Either way, he needed to stretch, think, clear his mind, but mostly he needed to get the hell out of this room.

He sifted through the pile of clothes on the floor and shrugged on a hooded jumper, before automatically searching the bedside table for the digital lights of a clock. He remembered moments later that there were no clocks in the building, and flipped open his cell to discover that it was one in the morning. The same time Tyler was shot. Rigsby tried to forget his last thought as he crossed the room and claimed a biscuit from the small fridge in the corner. He paused in the doorway, internally debating, before returning to his bedroom for his Glock and tucking it halfway into his pants. Better safe than sorry, right? Coaxing the door closed behind him, he turned and found himself in the hallway. He turned right for no better reason than for it simply seemed the better way to go.

As he walked, he reached his right hand out to brush lightly along the edge of the wall, and finished his biscuit as his mind drifted to baseball, shoes, puppies, anything that had absolutely no relevance to the past hour. He wanted to think about the case, to come up with an explanation as to why Sam Tyler was murdered and how everything aligned with the Matthew Donovan case; such an ingenious explanation that he could knock down Lisbon's door right now to tell her and still keep all of his fingers. But he knew that he couldn't, and so he simply walked, without direction or purpose, and without thought.

It took him a few moments to realise that he had slowed down, and that he was outside the room where Grace was staying. He stared at the gold numbers for a moment, before going to rest his head silently against the cold surface, anticipating the soothing hardness. But as he did, the door pushed away from him and he fell forward, his leg automatically stopping him from falling, and suddenly he found himself in Grace's room. Rigsby froze, panicking for a moment that he might have woken her (or, in a brief moment of insanity, that he might find the corpse from his dream), but when no noise at all, or stench of blood, came from the adjoining bedroom, he relaxed.

But he suddenly stiffened again as he turned to the door, and a thought struck him. Grace wouldn't leave her door open. Not Grace. She would be careful, aware; they may very well be in the same building as the murderer, for God's sake. She would know these things. Was he overreacting? Rigsby's eyes swept the room, finding nothing out of the ordinary that he could see in the darkness. He probably was.

Unless.

Rigsby stopped breathing, his heartbeat erratic beyond repair, his senses on overdrive as he observed, listened, prayed that he was wrong. He didn't know whether the night's events had made him paranoid, but he didn't care, he continued to listen to the voice in his head, screaming a thousand terrible images of Tyler's killer tearing apart the investigation by taking out one of their own. That's what his dream had been trying to tell him.

"Grace?" he called, quietly at first but stronger and stronger as he walked slowly to the bedroom and flicked on the light. He half expected to have woken Grace up and to have her sitting upright in her bed, blinking at the sudden abundance of light and running her hand through her hair in that special way of hers. God knows that he prayed a thousand times in that second for it to be true.

The room was empty.

Rigsby was out the door in a heartbeat, racing across the living room and drawing his Glock as soon as he entered the hallway. A quiet, discreet pace, he thought as he began to run. That's where he would take her, and kill her. Wild panic surged through his veins, his thoughts a blur. The only thought he could process was that he couldn't run and think at the same time; he knew he couldn't stay calm enough to do both. He slowed painfully to a stop and forced himself to think. Quiet, discreet. Quiet, discreet. He repeated the words countless times under his breath, picturing the map of 'LAVA' that Tom Jackson had shown him and Lisbon today. The bathroom? The elevator?

His eyes snapped open. The roof.

Quiet and discreet.

Rigsby turned and ran like he had never ran before, no longer caring who he woke up in the process, until he reached a flight of stairs and took them four at a time, his lungs bursting. After a terribly endless passage of time that was probably no more than thirty seconds, he reached the last few steps and an old door. He gripped his gun tightly, heart in his throat, and slowly turned the handle, his hand shaking, terrified of what he might find.

The cool night's breeze whipped his face as he stepped out onto concrete, a small, empty space bordered by railings and with a spectacular view of the city lights. Cars beeped and honked far below but could be in another world, for all he knew. The calm, tranquil atmosphere hit him hard and slightly calmed him down, reminded him to breathe. It wasn't the only thing that did so.

The outline of a woman was pasted against the indigo sky, the light of a million stars casting a soft glow onto her shadow. She leant gently against the railing, the breeze playing a steady game with her long, flowing hair as she looked out over the city. She wore a singlet and pyjama shorts, her legs streaming on forever beneath them to bare feet, same as his; her stance relaxed. He could watch her like this all night.

He finally allowed himself to fully relax, his shoulders sagging in relief as he lowered his gun. She was alive. She was safe.

"Grace," he breathed, smiling.

The smile vanished when the silhouette jumped slightly and straightened.

"Rigsby?" she asked, as she turned around.

Rigsby tucked his Glock back into his pants, feeling incredibly stupid. He allowed himself to fully acknowledge every idiotic act he'd performed that night out of paranoia, and cringed. Breaking into her apartment and running through the hallways with a gun, because he'd thought she was dead on account of a dream he'd had. It wasn't the best night he'd ever experienced. But right now, the simple knowledge that Grace was alive and that she hadn't been murdered by Tyler's killer was doing wonders to his emotions. The only thing he felt was pure happiness, relief, calm. He took a deep breath and smiled, and thought he'd better join her next to the railings before she became an illusion and faded away.

"You know it's one in the morning, right?" he asked as he stood next to her, losing himself in her eyes as she turned to face him.

"I think it's actually closer to two," she smiled, and his heart skipped at the sound of her voice. After all, a few minutes ago, he thought he'd never hear it again. Her features glowed softly in response to the countless streets illuminated below that her eyes fell on after she spoke.

"I love city lights," she whispered, closing her eyes and savouring the feeling of the soft breeze aound her face. Screw his last statement, he could watch her like _this_ all night. Grace suddenly shivered as the breeze intensified to a wind, and before Rigsby even knew what he was doing, his jumper was in his arms. Grace glanced at it for a moment, before smiling shyly and accepting it, but then she looked up at him, worried.

"I couldn't, you'll be frozen…"

"I'm fine," he cut her off, and it was true. He could feel heat radiating off him, a reminder of the last ten minutes he'd spent running his heart out. He wouldn't be cold for another three weeks. Her smile returned, and she shrugged the jumper over her head and sighed, pulling herself in closely and closing her eyes, most likely savouring the warmth. For the thousandth time that night, Rigsby had forgotten how to breathe. Her in his jumper. _His_ jumper. _Her_. He suddenly lost track of everything that had propelled him to this moment. Screw every statement he'd ever made. He could watch her like this _forever_.

"So what about you?" her question lifted him from his trance momentarily.

"What about me?" he asked, confused.

Grace laughed, and his heart skipped a beat.

"Why are you up this late? Actually," she smiled, "this early."

"Couldn't sleep," he replied, returning her smile for reasons she'd never know. She turned to face him once more as a car honked from below.

"Rough night?"

"You could call it that."

Grace smiled sympathetically at him and he return her gaze, and they remained like this for longer than which was usually deemed comfortable. Rigsby memorised every fragment of colour in her eyes, every strand of hair, and wondered if he had it in him to simply reach forward and brush a strand away from her face. Both of them would know what was to follow; they'd seen it in the movies more times than was necessary. Her smile vanished, her demeanour vulnerable, tender. It should be the easiest thing in the world. But as he began to summon the courage, she suddenly looked down, breaking the spell that had held them both, and then gazed at him questioningly.

"Rigsby? Why are you carrying a gun?"

It was an incredibly convenient time to remember how to be embarrassed.

* * *

_He took the stairs, one by one._

_Heart in his mouth._

_He couldn't.._

_It wasn't supposed to..  
_

No.

Patrick Jane held his head in his hands and refused to cry, the soft glow of the moonlight lukewarm on his skin. Silence erupted around him, as loud and as painful as if a hundred people stood there screaming at him. Silence. He truly hated silence. It served as a reminder, day in, day out, that no matter how far he ran, how much progress he achieved on his own sanity, there was always the numbing fear that if he slowed down for just a second, the terrible nothingness would be right there to envelope him yet again. And he couldn't escape it, no matter how hard he tried.

It was always worse at night. The silence, the pain, the memories, with nothing to distract them from taking him then and there. No everyday human conversation to serve as the only bastion he had. At night, all the memories he'd suppressed during the day would run amock in his mind, painting the past on the walls in colours so vivid that he couldn't turn away, despite the fact that he wanted nothing more than to be able to.

And this night, of all nights? The worst of them all; the screams louder, the pain harsher, the memories so close in this moment when he finally surrendered and allowed the shadows to pull him back to the night where everything ended. Rushed footsteps thudded throughout the hallway at that moment, and he jumped, his mind writing the sound into the story he'd read a thousand times, only to find it never got any better.

_His footsteps, shaky on the carpet._

_One after the other.._

_The door looming ahead.._

_Closer.._

_Closer.._

NO.

Jane's head snapped up from his hands, and he began to pace quickly around the room, his observations rushed but their purpose only to distract him, not to make sense. He wouldn't drag himself through this torture again. He couldn't. That's why he was here, in Sam Tyler's hotel room. He took a deep, shaky breath and ran his fingers through his hair, the pain not going, never going, but numbing gently. It was all he asked for, a chance to shove everything into a locked room for the night and allow himself to think of the case. God knows he needed to. Something had felt off to him, some snippet of Tyler's essence that had gone unnoticed, and he wasn't accustomed to the feeling of missing something that could propel the case in a whole new direction.

So here he was. The room was almost bare now, the bed stripped down to a mattress, and the living room deprived of most of it's elements, claimed as evidence or needed for prints. Jane moved to sit on the edge of the bed, running through the facts in his mind, rejoicing that it was becoming easier and easier to do with each second.

Sam Tyler had left for work at eight on Friday morning. That night, at approximately nine, he'd called Heather to let her know he was staying the night in his room. He then socialised in the casino until around midnight, according to Jackson, before retiring to his room. Within the hour, someone had broken into the room, shot him three times with a 22 calibre (according to Macey), and left. Seven hours later, his body had been found.

Something was definitely missing; Jane could feel it. Midnight was reasonably early for a casino owner to call it a night, and especially on a Friday, the beginning of the weekend, when the overworked adults would trudge in, needing escape. Business would have been positively booming. There was something Tyler had to do, someone he had to see. Jane's eyes drifted around the room, mentally picturing Tyler entering the room, alone? Accompanied? His gaze fell on the place where the pillows usually rested; now the mattress encountered nothing but the bed frame, and the wallpaper, the structure lacking a headboard. A thought suddenly struck him, and he stood up to get a closer look at the wall behind the bed. Jane reached out his hand and gently ran it along the blue surface, his senses focused on the smoothness, and nothing else. After a moment, he smiled as he found what he was looking for. They were small, invisible to the naked eye and almost impossible to detect. But they were there. Nail marks.

Jane straightened and began to cross the room. He wanted to tell Lisbon right now, wanted to have her wake the rest of the team and put the pieces together, and arrest someone before morning. But for some reason, he felt like he couldn't disturb her. Her demeanour today had caused him to stop and think that maybe she truly needed her sleep tonight. And, of course, she would probably never tell him anything remotely personal ever again if he woke her up at two in the morning.

Tomorrow, he would tell her what he discovered, and she probably would laugh at his observations, but he would explain the significance of the nail marks and eventually, as always, she would begin to listen to his deduction.

Because whether she believed him or not, Sam Tyler was having an affair.

_Reviews equal quicker updates!  
Thanks for reading._

_Jess xx_


	4. Melanie

_Okay, so you've probably noticed by now that I write chapters in two parts. Two POV's. That won't change. I thought I'd also better point out that when I write out a name fully at the beginning of the section, that means it's from that character's POV. For example, 'Teresa Lisbon shot a mild glare at Jane.' Ergo, it's from Lisbon's POV. Anyway, moving on. Chapter 4! I finished this three days late; it was supposed to be up on my birthday, but I had a fair bit of trouble with this chapter. I think another reason for the delay would be that I got The Mentalist on DVD, and I can't stop watching it. My cross to bear. And when I write, I've been glued to the screen for so long that there is a Patrick Jane in my head that screams at me when I write something he wouldn't say. Which makes things either a whole lot easier or a whole lot harder. I haven't decided yet.  
Anyway, enough with the massive A/N. Enjoy, and review! _

_I don't own the Mentalist or anyone associated with it._

**Chapter 4: Melanie.**

"I don't believe this. You were sneaking around in the middle of the night?"

"Well, I wouldn't call it sneaking. It sounds like I'm hiding from someone. You could have come and visited me, if you'd wanted to."

Teresa Lisbon shot a mild glare at Jane and was about to ask why she'd give up precious sleep to babysit him when the elevator opened. A couple with a suitcase brushed past them as they entered the confined space and the doors closed. Lisbon went to direct them to the ground floor, but before she could, Jane's arm intervened as he pushed the button for the second. She raised her eyebrows at him.

"Why are we.."

"I need to take a look around," he cut her off. Lisbon groaned under her breath, wishing a steaming cup of coffee would materialise in her hands and somehow cause her to forget that she'd been up half the night listening to some drunken idiot crash his way through the halls. She had, in fact, attempted to make some coffee this morning from the tin supplied in her room, but there was a reason Vegas was famous for it's atmosphere and not it's hot drinks. The lack of caffeine had produced a slight headache and left her feeling extremely tired. When the team was back in Sacramento, she was definitely going to cut down.

"You don't have to come if you don't want to," Jane continued. It took her a moment to remember he was referring to the second floor.

"Why?" she smirked. "What's there that I don't want to see?"  
"Lisbon," he locked his gaze with hers, his voice soft, "the casino's on this floor."

Her smile faded; her jaw clenching as she broke eye contact to stare at her feet. Over the past twenty-four hours, she'd made a drastic improvement on banishing any thought of the past from her mind and keeping them there, and she did this now as the flashbacks threatened to take control once more. She should have known that Jane would hit the truth eventually; it was what he did best, after all-see things he was never meant to see-and some part of her wondered bleakly how she could possibly have forgotten that.

"Jane.." she began.

"I know, I know," he interrupted, "it's completely your business. But.." his eyes found hers again, "..you know you can tell me, right?"

Lisbon was surprised to find that she had no truthful answer to his question. On any other day her immediate retort would have been that she couldn't, in fact, tell him anything and she wouldn't want to; but for some reason she couldn't bring herself to say it. She knew that Jane could figure it out in a heartbeat if he wanted to or if he hadn't already, yet he was allowing her the respect of letting her come to him. She'd never seen him do that before, and it left her with no words as she continued to stare.

The creaking of the elevator pushed her thoughts to the back of her mind, and the doors parted to the rest of the team as she and Jane stepped out onto the hallway of the second floor.

"Okay, Jane," Rigsby, began, "why are we here?"

"You are here," Jane replied, "because Sam Tyler's mistress is here."

"We don't know there _is_ a mistress yet," Lisbon said as they began to walk. Jane opened his mouth to speak but she cut him off.

"Nail marks on a wall are not solid proof."

"But.."

"_Not proof_, Jane. Especially when you find them at _two in the morning._"

"What was I supposed to do, sleep?"

She detected a hint of defensiveness in his tone as he paused for a second to hold her gaze. Lisbon was suddenly reminded of yesterday morning and his aloof behaviour, and then found the same look in his eyes as she had then. Sad, distant and never meant to be seen by her. A thought flickered across her mind that maybe there was something he wasn't telling her too, but their eye contact broke as soon as it had begun to hold, and he was again walking impatiently in front of her.

"Tyler's affair," he continued, "has been going on a while. One night of passion could never produce such a scratched wall. Ergo, the mistress had some form of feelings for him, otherwise she wouldn't keep coming back."

"How do you know that?" questioned Van Pelt from behind her. "What if she's the murderer?"

"I'm not saying she isn't," Jane said. "It's a possibility. So, right now she'll either be terrified because she's just murdered her lover, or consumed with anger and grief because he's gone."

"But why here?" asked Rigsby. "How do you know she's even in the building?"  
"I don't," Jane replied, flashing a wicked smile that suggested otherwise as he went to turn the corner.

"Hang on," Lisbon stopped him, having processed his words, "You are _not_ leading us on another escapade based on guesswork."

"It's not guesswork," he rallied, turning to face her.

"That's your opinion. But if you're right and there _is_ an affair, this case will be blown right open, and none of us will have any time to follow you around like a dog."

"You don't_ have _to follow me."

"I do if I want to keep my job."

"That's your opinion," he shot her own words back at her, and with a cocky grin he disappeared around the corner. Lisbon stared defeatedly at the ground where he'd just stood and brought a hand to her temple to try and soothe the endless throbbing. She wanted to forget that she'd spoken to Jane at all today; even more, she just wanted to be back in her own state, drinking her own coffee, anywhere but this place.  
"Uh, Boss?" Rigsby questioned from behind her. Lisbon sighed, and decided in a sudden wave of defiance that she could handle the room she was about to enter. She closed her eyes and breathed out slowly. No flashbacks. No memories. It was just a casino, for God's sake.

But as she turned the corner a moment later, that very defiance abandoned her in a cold rush of fear as the bold lights and incessant sounds of machines overtook her, and every word of eighteen years ago returned as though it had never left.

_She drew her knees to her chest and shook slightly in the darkness as she listened._

"_Did you ever think of the kids, Mia?"_

"_I.."_

"_Don't give me some bullshit about caring. Tess.."_

_She shuddered violently at the mention of her name._

"_Leave her out of this! The boys, too. They have nothing.."_

"_They have _everything_ to do with this!"_

_Muffled screams._

_Bang._

_Then, nothing._

_Her heart stopped as she strained her ears, and she prayed._

_Please._

_Please.._

_No._

"_I'm..sorry."_

_Breathe. She's okay._

_A single tear rolled down her cheek, and she brushed it away as she got to her feet._

_The boys._

_She found her way blindly to the next room, to encounter three pairs of terrified eyes._

_She crept to them and held them in the darkness, whispering repeatedly that it was going to be okay, that tomorrow would be different._

_But for some reason, she couldn't fully convince herself that it was true._

Lisbon was vaguely aware of her feet moving robotically beneath her, of the backs of her team ahead and of Jane standing triumphantly next to the bar. As her feet stopped moving of their own accord, a hazy thought entered her mind and told her in a faraway voice that she should be feeling Jane's eyes on her, should hear his voice as he explained his latest deduction.

But all she could feel was the bitter warmth of her brothers, and all she could hear were quiet, terribly distant sobs that never quite stopped.

* * *

"What'll you have?"

Grace Van Pelt watched as Jane ignored the question of the waitress in her late twenties leaning against the bar, her clothes professionally suggestive, her wild dark hair tied back. Jane's eyes wandered slowly across her face, reading her emotions, Grace assumed, and after a moment he smiled and turned to the rest of the team.

"Yep, this is her."

"I'm sorry?" the waitress asked.

"You and Sam Tyler were having an affair," Jane replied slowly, as if he were spelling it out for her. "I understand the attraction; he was a very powerful man."

"Excuse me?" asked the woman incredulously, her eyes flashing, and Grace detected no deception or guilt in her demeanour. She smiled inwardly, wondering if this would be the moment where Jane was finally proved wrong, and decided to ask the obvious.

"How do you know she's the mistress?"

Jane turned to her, eyes gleaming, and she got the feeling he'd been waiting for someone to ask.

"Sam Tyler," he began, "was consumed with a deep nostalgia. Everyone here knows that. And Melanie," he read the baffled waitress' nametag, "is a mixture of everything that reminded Sam of his first wife. Young, beautiful and attracted to power. The first Mrs Tyler was a brunette, obviously."

"This is insane," Melanie had found her voice and was apparently attempting to defend herself. "I wasn't sleeping with Sam."  
"Of course you were," Jane told her, "that's not the issue here. The issue is whether you killed her or not. So did you? Kill her?"  
Melanie could only stare at him, seemingly in shock, and Grace didn't blame her; Jane's accusation would have left her speechless, too. After a moment, the buzzing atmosphere of the casino around them began to make the situation awkward. Grace went to move the conversation along, but an approaching figure beat him to it as she opened her mouth.

"What's going on?" asked Tom Jackson. His eyes flickered around the group until his gaze landed on Melanie.

"Mel?"

"Melanie, her, was sleeping with Sam," Jane informed him, and the waitress didn't bother attempting to deny it this time. Jackson, on the other hand, blinked profusely before his eyes widened.

"No," he muttered, and then again in a slightly stronger voice, "No. Sam wouldn't do that to Heather. He loved her. No."

"Interesting," commented Jane, "you want to believe what you're saying, even though it's a lie."

"You don't know anything about me," Jackson almost snarled as he drew himself up to his full six foot two. Jane smirked.

"I know you have feelings for Melanie. Sam's death must have been incredibly convenient for you; the woman you love, emotional, vulnerable. Not to mention _available_, since her lover is dead. What a stroke of luck."

"You have no right," Jackson growled as he took a menacing step forward, but before he could unleash his anger, Rigsby lay a hand on his arm.

"Calm down, Jackson. If you hurt him, we'll have to arrest you for assault, and you don't want us to do that."

Grace watched as Jackson's eyes locked with Jane's, and the fire in them slowly began to fade. After a moment, his head drooped and he spoke quietly.

"I suppose you'll be wanting to ask me a few questions now."  
"That's right." Rigsby smiled somewhat triumphantly and gestured to the nearest exit. The room surrounding them continued to buzz, completely unaware of the past conversation.

"We'll need to ask you a couple of things too, Melanie," Cho added. The waitress nodded slowly, seeming to have gained control of her senses once more, and manoeuvred over the surface of the bar with ease. Both followed Cho and Rigsby out of the room, probably feeling very small, and Grace would almost have felt sorry for them, if it wasn't for the very real possibility that one or both of them murdered Tyler.

Grace tilted her head over her shoulder, with the intention of informing Jane just how disrespectful he could be at times. But she hesitated when she followed his unnervingly soft gaze to Lisbon, and gasped at the look in her eyes. Glassy, distant. And sad, so incredibly sad. She stood small, shoulders hunched as she stared into thin air. Grace realised she hadn't uttered a word since entering the casino, and suddenly felt terrible for failing to notice sooner. She glanced at Jane and opened her mouth to speak, although she was unsure of what to say; but Jane met her gaze knowingly and jerked his head in the direction of the exit. Grace understood, and with a small nod she turned and headed toward the door. Part of her was slightly nervous at the thought of her Boss appearing so fragile. But in the corner of her eye, she saw Lisbon raise her head slightly as Jane lay a hand on her arm, and she knew that if anyone could bring her back, it was him.

Those thoughts were suddenly pushed to the back of her mind as she closed the door behind her and the mind-numbing chaos of the casino became muffled, controlled. Rigsby stood a few feet from her with Jackson, while Cho was intently questioning Melanie at the very end of the hallway. Grace joined Rigsby; not only because it was closer, but she really wanted to her what Jackson had to say.

Rigsby acknowledged her presence with a flicker of the eyes and a small smile, but then he glanced behind her and a confused expression reached his features.

"Where's Jane and Lisbon?"

"They'll be here in a minute," she replied, locking her gaze with his and giving him a look that hopefully said 'don't ask'. Rigsby seemed to get the message, nodding slightly and turning back to Jackson, who had acquired a smirk.

"Trouble with the staff?" he taunted.

"You're not in any position for wit, Tom. If Jane's right, you withheld information from us, and that's a federal offence."

Jackson lowered his eyes to the floor.

"I knew about the affair," he admitted. "He's right, he's right about everything. I love Mel. Which is exactly why I didn't kill Sam," he swore defiantly as he searched Rigsby's eyes and then Grace's for any sign of mercy. "Mel was happy when she was with him. I couldn't take that away from her. I couldn't hurt her like that. You _have to believe me_."

"How'd you find out about the affair?" Grace asked, ignoring his question, and Jackson calmed down slightly.

"A few weeks ago," he said, "I got suspicious. Mel would disappear as soon as the bar closed. She usually hung around for a while to have a drink. So one night, I followed her, and I saw her go into Sam's room." His eyes shone with the memory, and the door behind them opened as he spoke. Grace glanced over her shoulder and sighed in relief as Lisbon joined them, her eyes back to normal, her demeanour having returned to the one of determination and maturity that Grace had always admired. Jane continued past her, and as she searched his eys for answers he looked at her and permitted her a small smile, before continuing down the hallway. A similar smile appeared on her own face as she decided she didn't want to know, and turned back to see Rigsby quietly filling Lisbon in on what she'd missed of the questioning. She nodded once in understanding and then turned to Jackson, unofficially claiming control of the situation like the leader she was.

"Well, Jackson," she said, her voice as strong and as calm as ever, "seems like we can charge you with obstruction of justice. Care to comment on that?"  
"No," he began, "no, you don't understand.."

"Make us understand, Tom."

Jackson locked his gaze with Lisbon's, and then sighed heavily in surrender and leant back against the wall.

"I was never next in line for 'LAVA'," he told them, his expression honest. "Heather was."

"Heather Tyler?" Grace asked, and he nodded.

"When Sam died, she called me and promised to transfer full ownership to me if I kept quiet about the affair."

"Heather knew about the affair?"

"She did. I agreed to her offer. Did I feel guilty for it? Of course. But I've devoted my _life_ to this place, and Heather doesn't know squat about casinos. So, I thought..that it was for the best."

"Not if the killer walks because of it," Lisbon said sternly, before stepping back.

"You can go, Jackson," she told him, and he nodded curtly before shuffling away in the direction of the door. Once he was gone, Lisbon turned to Rigsby and smiled grimly, raising her eyebrows.

"Sounds like Heather has some explaining to do."

"We paying her a visit, Boss?" Grace asked.

"No, I'll call her," Lisbon replied, fishing her cell phone out of her pocket as she did. "She thinks we're still clueless about the affair. She won't be suspecting much."

Cho and Jane joined them then; Melanie seemed to have long since disappeared. Lisbon produced a piece of paper with Heather's house number scribbled on it, and copied the number into her phone as the team began to descend slowly down the hallway. There was a somewhat anxious silence as she pressed 'call' and activated the loudspeaker. Grace looked over at Rigsby as the call tone echoed against the walls, and as it eventually rang out.

"Damn," Lisbon cursed as she closed her cell. She seemed to ponder for a moment, and then ordered the team to be in the black CBI car within three minutes. Grace nodded as confirmation that she'd heard and turned to enter the elevator that had just opened to her left, but Jane's voice made her hesitate.

"She's not at home."

Grace glanced over at Jane, who's expression was soaked in sudden realisation, as though a thought had just struck him for the first time. He stared into space for no more than a second, which was when Lisbon's words appeared to bring him abruptly back to Earth as she sighed and turned to face him.

"Okay, Jane. Where is she?"

Grace would never stop being amazed at how excited one of Jane's grins could make her feel.

Like the show was about to begin.

_There we go!  
Click the green button and you'll make a certain author very happy!  
Next chapter should be up by Sunday at the latest, I promise.  
If it isn't, I give you permission to send me hate mail to your heart's content.  
And if I don't get another chance, Merry Christmas!_


	5. Pictures

_Oh god. Oh goddy god god. I can't express how sorry I am! This was supposed to be up weeks ago. But I swear, I sat in front of the computer for hours, and I just kept coming up blank. Writer's block to the extreme. Anyway, the point is that it's here now, right? I want to make it up to everyone who reads this, so I'm issuing a deal. You review my story, I review one of yours. I can't guarantee it'll be straight away, but I promise you that I will. And I really hope you like this chapter; especially the part from Cho's POV, because that's the part that took me so long to write. The case kept getting bigger, and I couldn't help myself. Anyway, onward!_

_I don't own the Mentalist or anyone associated with it._

**Chapter 5: Pictures.**

Kimball Cho directed the CBI van through the narrow streets, one hand resting on the gun in the holster attached to his belt, the other gripping the wheel, his fingers tapping impatiently of their own accord. Beside him, Lisbon held the notes he'd written from yesterday's interview with Heather. With one finger she instructed for him to turn right, and as the car swerved around the corner a little too quickly, an array of almost identical houses came into view. Their lack of personality, combined with the somewhat depressing heat of the sun on the driveways, made Cho feel a little claustrophobic. And perhaps if he'd been in Sloan for another reason than to catch a killer, he would have paused to contemplate why.

"Number 13," Lisbon read off the address that Heather had supplied. It was a possibility that she'd given them a fake, but Jane didn't care for that thought, and the team didn't have the evidence nor the time to consider him wrong. Cho slowed the car and noted each faded number on the curb as they passed.

"This is it," he announced after a moment, and brought the car to a still.

Number 13 had nothing about it to suggest the inhabitance of a killer, it's demeanour as plain and insignificant as the other houses in the street. The lawn was tidy and dull, a single tree rising from it's centre, leaves drooping from lack of water. As the team opened the car doors, Cho took note of the fact that no-one seemed to be home; not a car was in sight, and there appeared to be no signs of activity from inside. The morning heat hung groggily in the air as Lisbon led the way up the driveway, the only sound the slight scuffing of shoes against concrete. Reaching the front door, she raised a hand and knocked five times, and Cho's hand wandered instinctively back toward his gun.

"Nathan Whitlock?" she called, drawing her badge and flipping it open.

The only response was the shrill call of a bird in the distance and a slight huff as Rigsby shifted his weight from one foot to the other. After a moment, she knocked again.

"Mr Whitlock?"

"There's no-one here," Cho commented, and to his left he noticed Van Pelt sighing in disappointment. He knew what she was thinking, because he thought the same; it was likely both Nathan and Heather had run, taken the twins to a friend's house and disappeared. It was the protective instinct that people possessing a guilty conscience often succumbed to-when threatened, drop everything and run-and both were certainly guilty of something. Cho turned to head back to the car-accompanied by Rigsby, Van Pelt and, after a moment, Lisbon-and pondered over where Heather would go. But a loud click returned his attention to behind him, where Jane stood next to a now open door, his eyes on Lisbon, who raised an eyebrow.

"It was unlocked, I swear."

Without another word he disappeared into the house, and after a moment, Lisbon rolled her eyes and followed, drawing her gun and calling to Jane that she'd go first. Rigsby laughed and Cho understood; the possibility of Jane waiting for Lisbon was about as likely as the killer sauntering up the driveway and confessing. He, too, drew his gun and the door creaked open wider as he entered the house. Behind him, Rigsby and Van Pelt did the same.

Cho found himself in a dimly lit hallway, and moved cautiously forward, two hands on his gun. Somewhere in front of him, he could hear the muffled dialogue of a television as well as the soft thumps of Lisbon and Jane moving around; behind him, the soft click of the door as it shut and the quiet footsteps of Van Pelt and Rigsby. A door appeared to his left and he opened it to a small, dirty kitchen where the smell of smoke instantly clouded his senses; an overpowering stench of nicotine but with the added tang of something musty and most likely illegal. Cho confirmed his assumption as he drifted to the kitchen table and observed an ashtray overflowing with rolled joints, and an open bag filled with a soft white powder.

"Marijiuana," Van Pelt said under her breath from his right.

"You think Nathan was dealing Heather?" asked Rigsby. But as Cho opened his mouth to answer, there came a sudden series of thumps up the hall, and with a shared look the three turned and quickened their step as they left the room. Out the door, descending down the hallway and through an opening on the right to an equally dirty living room. Jane was seated lazily on the couch to the right, watching what looked to be a detective show on an old television blaring in the corner. But Cho's gaze was immediately drawn to the floor in front of him, and as he took a step forward he heard Van Pelt gasp from behind him.

Heather Tyler lay motionless on the floor, blood seeping from a thin head wound and staining her frail blonde hair. Her right eye was raised and puffy, and showed the beginnings of a nasty black eye. Lisbon knelt at her side with her phone held to her ear, presumably calling for an ambulance, her other hand skimming lightly over Heather's wrist where red finger marks snaked up her arm. As Cho moved closer and stood over her, Boss ended the call and turned to face him as she stood.

"Ambulance is on it's way," she announced.

"What happened?" asked Van Pelt, her tone one of disgust as she moved to replace Lisbon at Heather's side, pressing two fingers to her neck in the hopes for a pulse.

"Seems like her and Nathan had a disagreement," Lisbon answered curtly, returning her cell to her pocket. "She's been here for no more than fifteen minutes, we must have just missed him. And yes," she sighed, "Van Pelt, there is a pulse."

"There's around a kilo of marijiuana in the kitchen," Cho informed her, and watched as she nodded slightly and then looked around, lost in thought. Cho himself did the same. The room seemed relatively undisturbed, although it was hard to tell by the mess. A table stood by Heather's head, the top covered in various food scraps, but the detail that immediately drew his attention was the edge where the top met the leg; a dark stream of blood ran vertically along the surface. As if someone had hit their head on it. His eyes darted back to Lisbon, who's eyes were on him; they shared a knowing look before she slowly approached the table and ran her hand along the edge. It came away smeared with red.

"So Heather comes to visit Nathan," she mused after a second. "What's her reason for the visit?"

"The drugs," Rigsby said, moving to stand next to Cho. "She could have wanted the drugs."

"Or she could have wanted Nathan to stop," Van Pelt ventured, her eyes on Heather's face. "Maybe that's why she was at his house Friday night?"

"Possibility," Lisbon acknowledged, before pushing on, her mind visibly reeling just as Cho's was. "So he refuses to give up, they fight," her eyes flickering to various places in the room as she spoke, "and then Heather goes to leave.."

"..And he grabs her by the wrist to stop her," said Cho, and he could almost visualise it as though it were occurring right there in front of him.

"And then..she falls?" Lisbon asked. Rigsby shook his head and stepped forward.

"She was pushed," he said, the tone of his voice slightly raised in excitement. "Pushed with enough force to hit her head hard on the corner of the table.."  
"And knock herself unconscious," Van Pelt gasped.

"Wait," hesitated Lisbon, "how does she get the black eye?"

"He punches her," Cho filled in the gaps, his thoughts racing in by the thousands. "She says something that makes him explode, he punches her, she falls."

"Hits her head, doesn't move.."

"He panics.."

"And he runs," finished Lisbon, and there was a gleam in her eye as the room fell silent apart from the television in the background. Cho crossed his arms and felt the corner of his mouth twitch as he pondered over what they'd just fabricated. And as he did, a large amount of questions presented themselves, some of which he had no idea of the answer to. Was their fabrication even true? Was it really all about the drugs? And if so, did this have anything to do with Sam Tyler? And where had Nathan Whitlock run to? A wild guess was still the very best they could do. But as he began to process his questions, a laugh suddenly broke the soft silence and directed the team's attention to the man on the couch.

"Anything funny, Jane?" asked Lisbon in a voice similar to someone dealing with an infant. Jane tore his eyes away from the screen for a millisecond to give her a look before answering.

"Oh, it's just these detective shows," he said, "they amuse me."

"I'm glad," Lisbon retorted, before looking at Cho. "The drugs are in the kitchen, right?" Cho nodded and she began to cross the room.

"Aren't you going to ask my opinion?" quelled Jane.

"I thought you were watching TV," Lisbon said, pausing to turn back toward the couch.

"What, you don't think I can watch TV and listen to you guys at the same time?"

"Well, what's the point of asking? I already know what you're going to say."

"What am I going to say?"  
"That we're way off track, and that Nathan has nothing to do with it, and that Heather was having an affair of some sort."

"With her cousin?"

"With whoever." At Lisbon's words, Jane smirked.

"Liar. I never thought that."

"But we're wrong, right?" she asked irritatedly. "Nathan didn't do this," she gestured to Heather, "because he's too _obvious_."

"No, you're right," Jane said, and Cho noticed Rigsby perform a double-take, "Nathan did it. But your reasoning's all wrong."

"Oh, really," Lisbon took a step forward and smiled somewhat mockingly. "Fine, Jane. If you know everything, answer this. What were they fighting about?"

His smirk transformed into a grin, and Cho had the sudden impulse to settle down in a chair and get comfortable. But then Jane turned his head back toward the television, and laughed again at something invisible to the rest of the room.

"_Jane_."

"Sorry," he said after a moment, although Cho highly doubted that he meant it. "Have you ever watched this before? It's hilarious."

"It also has no relevance."

"No," said Jane, "that's where you're wrong. It has all the relevance in the world." When no-one reacted to his statement, he pointed the remote in his hand at the screen.

"Crime channel," he commented, tilting his head over his shoulder as he spoke. "Tell me, who would watch the crime channel?"

"What, there's a stereotype?" asked Lisbon. Jane looked at her pointedly.

"Yes," he answered, "there is. People who can handle the violence, who are intrigued by the darkness of a criminal's mind. People," he smiled, "who enjoy the chase. What does that bring to mind?"

"Cops?" Lisbon pitched dryly.

"Think harder."

Cho looked down, Jane's words swirling around in his head. People who enjoy the chase. And after a moment, he realised. Cops were only one half of the crime.

"Criminals," he said. Jane's eyes fell on him, and his grin grew wider, and in one motion the television was a blank screen and he was halfway across the room. It took Cho's eyes a moment to adjust, but by the time they did, the door on the other side of the room was already swinging open and the usual look of frustration had already passed Lisbon's face. A few seconds later, she sighed loudly and gestured for the team to follow as she crossed the room. After Van Pelt had stated that she'd wait with Heather for the ambulance, Boss nodded in reply, and as Cho began to walk after her he wondered bleakly whether watching the crime channel made him intrigued by darkness as well.

They passed through the door to an adjoining and equally messy room, although this one granted no clues as to it's purpose. Ahead of him and Rigsby, Lisbon stood next to a stairway heading south to a basement, muttering something unintelligent to herself as she descended the steps. Down below, Jane's voice floated up to them, the words muffled but the tone unmistakeably increasing Cho's heart rate. Ten seconds and he was down the steps into a small, eerie basement; eerie not for the lighting or the climate of the room, but for the wall that both Jane and Lisbon stood staring at, that he could not take his eyes off.

"Oh, god," Rigsby breathed from beside him.

Heather Tyler's eyes stared down at them from at least a hundred photos lining a pinboard attached to the wallpaper. Her tall figure was visible from all angles; front, side, from above, far away, near. A few of the pictures showed her with Sam or the twins as they shopped or as they ate in the house; those particular pictures must have been taken from outside the window. But it was the slightly blurry photos that pulled Cho; they had no clear display of Heather's face, but they'd been put up on the wall anyway. Something told Cho that no picture had been overlooked for the collection, and that in itself made him slightly wary.

"Something tells me Nathan isn't Heather's cousin," he concluded.

"You got that right," Lisbon replied as she stepped forward to get a better look. "But why would Heather tell us he is? Why would she cover for her _stalker_?"

"Because he made her do it," answered Jane suddenly, and all eyes turned to him.

"What makes you say that?" challenged Rigsby. "Heather could have thought that if she told, he'd get her."

"No," Jane turned to look at Rigsby, "no, I don't think he'd ever hurt her. Stalkers with violence in mind generally have the one they're stalking in the middle of the photos. Like the centre of a target. Their photos are perfect, because their intentions are clear to them. These," he pointed to the wall, "are all over the place. Like he knows that he wants Heather, but he's unsure of what he wants to do with her if he gets her. It suggests lust."

"Nathan is in love with Heather," Lisbon stated dryly. Jane turned to her and grinned in confirmation.

"It doesn't explain why he made her cover for him," Cho pointed out, his eyes still on the wall in an attempt to find what Jane had uncovered. It took an entire second for him to give up.

"Well," said Jane, "he was manipulating Heather in some way. That much is clear. Controlling her for a reason we'll find out soon enough."

"But he needs to hold something over her to make her do what he says," said Rigsby. "So if he wouldn't hurt her, what's the threat?"

"I don't know," Jane shrugged, grinning wickedly. "I'm just thinking out loud."

The room fell into silence then, and Cho thought about what had just been uncovered. Nathan was stalking and manipulating Heather. But then, why was she at his house? It brought up a range of possibilities, each one fairly plausible in the right light. But many of the possibilities were axed as he added the fact that it had to end with Sam Tyler being shot. Cho looked over to Lisbon with the intention of voicing his opinion, but hesitated when he noticed her staring intently at the wall, her expression confused. After a moment, she opened her mouth to speak, and Cho got the odd feeling that something had just dawned on her.

"Does Heather look familiar to anyone else?" she asked. Now it was Cho's turn to be confused; he turned back to the wall and let his eyes soak in Heather's features, let his memory wander across her face. But after a moment, he came up empty and shook his head. He was almost certain that he'd never seen Heather Tyler before yesterday.

"Not really, Boss," Rigsby answered. Jane's eyes were not on the wall, but on Lisbon, his head cocked. But before anything more could be said, the floor above them groaned as though someone was crossing a room, and the steps creaked one by one as Van Pelt entered the basement.

"The paramedics have been and gone," she informed them, and Cho recalled hearing some noises earlier from upstairs. "They said she'd be out for a few hours, and that she'd.." Her eyes finally rested on the pinboard on the wall. "Oh. Oh my god."

"Van Pelt," Lisbon stepped closer to her, "does Heather look familiar in any way to you?"

Cho watched as her wide eyes shrunk a little closer to their normal size, and as she tore them away from the photos to look at Boss. It took her a few seconds to answer.

"You know what? I was thinking the same thing just before," she answered, the tone of her voice surprised.

"So I'm not crazy," Lisbon smirked, turning to look at Jane, who held his hands up in defense.

"I didn't say a thing!"

"You know," Van Pelt continued, and Cho's attention diverted back to her, "I thought that maybe she was from a previous case, or something. But we've never worked a case in this part of Vegas before; at least, I haven't, and-"

"Oh my god," Lisbon suddenly exclaimed, her eyes again back on the wall as she repeated Van Pelt's words. "From a previous case.." she reached out a hand to brush against one of the photos. It was a close shot of Heather's face front on, and a rather good one too. Cho glanced at Rigsby, who's face reflected the same confusion his most likely did. He also had no idea what Lisbon had just latched onto. Jane, for the most part, looked about as perplexed as Cho had ever seen him, but that wasn't saying much.

"We need…" Lisbon began, but then hesitated as she thought some more, and her next words were stronger, "we need to get back to 'LAVA' and look at the Donovan file again. Someone get the photos off the wall." She turned and strode quickly across the room, as if the team could wait until they were back in Vegas before she told them. As if they wanted to be surprised. Who did she think she was-Jane?

"Boss, wait," Cho said, following her and going over her last words, "I thought we'd established that the Donovan case and this one weren't related."

Lisbon turned back just enough so that Cho could view the excitement in her eyes.

"Matthew Donovan's wife," she said, "Lucy. She disappeared a couple of weeks after Matthew's case was pronounced cold. Left no forwarding address, nothing. It was assumed that she'd changed her name and gone somewhere just far enough away so that she could start afresh."

Start afresh. Cho looked down and pondered, reaching the same conclusion that Rigsby had appeared to have just come to.

"Somewhere like Vegas?" he asked, shock in his voice, and Cho watched the realisation wash over Van Pelt's face.

"Somewhere _exactly_like Vegas," Lisbon said, smiling somewhat triumphantly. Cho continued to put the pieces together, and suddenly, everything made perfect sense. Everything. He snapped his head up so urgently that the world was spinning for a slow second. Cho looked directly at Boss and spoke his thoughts, wondering briefly when the case had stopped being about Sam Tyler and began to be all about his wife.

"They're the same person," he finished. "Heather Tyler is Lucy Donovan."

* * *

"_Ms Donovan now wishes to make a statement."_

_Lucy Donovan stepped slowly up to the microphone, her movements shaky as she faced the onslaught of hungry reporters. She swallowed, every action seemingly forced, and opened her mouth to form the words that would stain the front page of every newspaper in California. _

"_I would like to thank the police and the CBI for doing all that they could to find my husband's murderer," she began, her voice initially soft and broken but gaining strength with every syllable. "They stopped at nothing to get to the truth, and I'll always be grateful for that, even though they never caught him, in the end. The knowledge that he's still out there is a terrible thing, but I have no other choice than to put it behind me, and turn the page." _

_Lucy then hesitated for a moment, and her eyes darted quickly to something or someone out of view of the cameras. She found herself again a moment later, and turned back to the reporters, the tears beginning to fall; yet her next words were the strongest they'd been, a clear sign that she believed them with all her heart._

"_Matthew was a good man," her voice echoed throughout the now motionless crowd. "He wasn't perfect, but neither am I. He was a good man," her voice began to weaken, "and he didn't deserve to die.."_

_Lucy's voice had broken on 'deserve', and as her words faded, the sobs began to rack her body and the reporters found their voices again. A police officer standing next to her placed a hand on her arm to guide her away from the media, but she pushed him away and gave the surrounding cameras one last morsel._

"_If the person who killed Matthew is watching," she said, her voice strong again as though she'd put every last effort into it, "I want them to know that what they've done won't haunt me forever. And neither will they."_

_Lucy allowed herself to be led away, the cameras flashing at her back._

Lisbon paused the television with the remote in her hand, and turned to give Van Pelt a questioning look, to which she nodded silently.

"It's definitely her, Boss."

Lisbon rewinded it back and paused it again, this instance being a frame where Lucy's face was almost front on. She glanced down at the photo in her hand-the one of Heather's face, close up, that had given her the flashback to start it all-and after a moment, she held it up to compare with the woman on the screen. Lucy had dyed her hair, her eyebrows, had subtle but many plastic surgeries, and the colour of Heather's skin was slightly paler, although that probably came with possessing a stalker. But the two women's eyes were the same, both tall, both frail looking. Lisbon sighed, sinking further into the couch as she did.

The team was seated in the living room of Lisbon's hotel room; Cho in an armchair, Rigsby with her on the couch, Van Pelt leaning on the arm by her head and Jane standing somewhere behind them all. After a moment, she gathered her thoughts and spoke.

"So Heather is Lucy," she began. "Where does that leave us?"

"I'll look into Heather's background," Van Pelt informed her, standing and heading for her laptop, which she'd undoubtedly brought with her. "Nathan has to be somewhere in her past, right?"

"Not necessarily," she replied. "She might have just needed to get away, not from a stalker, but from the fact that her husband is dead."  
"_Even though they never caught him_," quoted Cho. "_Him_. Sounds like she had an idea of who the killer was."

"It makes sense, Boss," Rigsby backed him up. "And she looks past the camera after she says it. Maybe she's looking at him?"

"Maybe." Lisbon closed her eyes and massaged her temple discreetly, willing her daylong headache to go away. "But if that's true, it means he's been stalking her for over three years. It also means that Nathan followed her here."

Which meant that it was her own fault that Sam Tyler was dead. That three years ago in Sacramento, she'd listened to this very same speech of Lucy's and failed to discover a stalker in her last few words, even though it was incredibly obvious, once she thought about it.

She felt like punching herself. Instead, she punched the couch.

"God damnit," she cursed, slightly unsure of the source of her anger, "why does Heather have to be unconscious?"

It was typical that the key to the entire case was right there, but unable to speak. She let her gaze fall on the screen again, at Lucy Donovan's distraught face, at her sadness; and she let her mind wander back to three years ago, when the trail was pronounced cold. When only one casino owner was dead.

Why didn't you tell us then, Lucy?

Why didn't you let us help?

It took her a moment to notice Cho and Rigsby were both looking at her strangely.

"What are you still doing here?" she challenged.

"Uh.."

"Find Nathan Whitlock."

She closed her eyes again, and felt the couch shift as Rigsby stood. She sighed heavily, her anger no longer directed at her team, but at herself. Cho and Rigsby had done nothing wrong, and she knew it more than anyone; but she couldn't help it. She'd had one of the most terrible days of her life, and she would murder her entire team right here and now if it meant she could have some coffee.

When she opened her eyes, it was to the face of Patrick Jane and the scenario she least felt like at the moment.

"What?" she asked bluntly, the incessant typing of Van Pelt slowly driving her to her wit's end.

"You okay?" What a question.

"I'm brilliant." Jane frowned, most likely at the sarcasm dripping from her words. But she really didn't have the energy for conversation right now, and especially not with him.

"I don't know if you've noticed, Jane, but I'm really not in the mood."

"I know," he replied, his voice strangely quiet, and her expression must have been amusing, because he laughed.

"Come on," he suddenly gestured for her to get up, "let's go for a walk."

"Jane.." all Lisbon wanted to do was sleep.

"There's a coffee shop a couple of blocks from here."

"We're supposed to be working," she said, trying unsuccessfully to control the low growl in her stomach at the mention of caffeine.

"Come on," he whined, stressing the syllables, "I'm only talking about half an hour. It'll be good for your headache."

She didn't even begin to wonder how he knew that. Instead, she decided not to fight; she'd recently realised that trying to ignore the cause of her headache was actually giving her a bigger one. Sighing, she stood.

"Half an hour," she warned. Jane grinned, shedding his jacket and folding it over a chair before indicating to the doorway.

"I know the way out, Jane."

Grace smiled in farewell as Lisbon closed the door.

She was probably glad to see them go.

_Thank you for reading!  
Remember, if you review mine, I'll review yours!  
So please do. I'm not going to guarantee anything this time, but I'll update as soon as I can. That, I can guarantee._

_Cheers!_

_Jess xx_


	6. Threats

__

Well, I didn't guarantee anything this time, but I still feel bad for writing so slow. Year Eleven started, which, for me, was a massive shock, and I barely wrote for two weeks. Fortunately, I've officially wrapped my head around school, and once I did that, the writing became easier, and here we are. A lot of stuff happens in this chapter; I hope it's easy enough to follow. For the ones who are waiting for the romance, I've got to ask you to please be patient; it will be worth it, I promise, but give me a few more chapters and, who knows?

_I don't own the Mentalist or anyone associated with it. _

**Chapter 6: Threats.**

"I told you that you'd feel better."

"Jane, don't ruin the moment."

Patrick Jane fought his urge to laugh as Lisbon wrapped her fingers around the coffee she'd been too stubborn to admit that she needed. He watched her lift it to her mouth, watched her eyes close in an attempt to savour the moment and couldn't hold his laugh back when a slow and soft smile spread across her face. She opened her eyes in annoyance and gave him a questioning glance, to which his laugh faded to a grin and he looked past her to the bustling streets.

"Shall we?" he gestured.

She simply shrugged in uncaring agreement, and they began to meander through the crowds. Vegas in the daytime was refreshingly normal; hurried and stressed adults with jobs to go to, people to see, money to earn. Hard-earned money that they would no doubt gamble away overnight.

Jane and Lisbon walked slowly, she savouring her coffee and he wondering bleakly where he had gone wrong in the case. Because in truth, he was almost angry at himself for having no answer to the questions that had presented themselves during the past hour. What Heather and Nathan had been fighting about, what she'd said to him to push him over the edge. Where Nathan had hidden in Lucy's world. And, ultimately, what the hell everything had to do with Sam Tyler. It was a strange and unfamiliar feeling, to hold the majority of the facts and yet not be able to come up with the last few pieces of the puzzle. It must be how the rest of the team felt on a daily basis. If so, it was a wonder they got anything done. Thank God he was there to help.

But to think that Lisbon blamed herself. He glanced over at her as they walked; her hands wrapped around her coffee, cradled like a baby to her chest. Her eyes gazed softly into the distance, but he would bet on the fact that she was taking no notice of the things she saw. He let his mind drift back to the moment in Nathan Whitlock's basement, when she'd realised she'd seen Heather before; remembered the faint trace of excitement that had woven itself into her features, growing more powerful as Van Pelt had added her opinion, and then the sudden addition of shock at her discovery.

But then he remembered how she'd slumped in the couch back at 'LAVA'; how the excitement had de-railed within seconds as Lucy's statement somehow gave her the idea that Sam's death was on her own head. She blamed herself for the murder of a complete stranger that occurred a whole state away. He really wished she'd see how ridiculous that sounded.

And she would.

"It's not your fault, you know," he began lightly. Lisbon blinked twice.

"What's not my fault?" Always stalling when it became personal.

"Sam Tyler," he replied carefully. "His death. Not your fault." Lisbon slowed for a second to give him a painted-on expression of denial, before something changed and she looked down at her feet.

"Don't read me, Jane."

He knew before he'd even opened his mouth that his words would touch a nerve, and he saw the evidence of it now in the locking of her jaw and her unwavering focus on weaving through the crowd ahead of them. The constant conversation and activity around them filled in the void where an awkward silence would have been, and yet he still felt the effect as if one was there. Slight remorse began to creep it's way up his spine, and he opened his mouth without a clue of what to say, but knowing that he had to say something.

"Why won't you tell me why you don't like casinos?"

Jane cringed inwardly as Lisbon stopped walking completely and turned her head to give him one of the darkest glares he'd seen from her in a long time. He found after a moment that he couldn't keep eye contact, and looked down, incredibly frustrated with his choice of words. When he looked back up again after composing himself, Lisbon's eyes had lost most of their intensity, and what shocked him slightly was the trace of fear and pain that had replaced the anger. It made him all the more worried about what it was that was tormenting her.

Made him all the more angry that this part of her past had left her so broken. And that's why he needed to know; why he couldn't stand to see her brush it off. She opened her mouth to speak, but Jane anticipated her all-too-predictable response and cut her off; his words soft, or so he hoped.

"For God's sake, Lisbon," he said, "you can't deny it anymore."

And he knew that she knew she couldn't, if the events of the day were anything of a baseline for them both. Jane allowed his mind to wander back to earlier, when Rigsby and Cho had just left the casino with Melanie and Jackson, and when he'd turned around to find her eyes glazed over and soaked in fear. He remembered how some of this fear had latched onto his own expression as he'd laid a hand on her arm and she'd slowly raised her gaze to meet his. No trace of embarrassment of shame, and that was what had scared him the most. Lisbon seemed to be remembering this too, because there was something strangely accepting in her tone as she finally spoke.

"I really don't want to talk about it, Jane."

The smallness of her voice had him immediately complying, knowing that by doing so he would be returning the strength to her eyes for the time being.

"Okay," he breathed, and he began to relax when he saw the corners of her mouth twitch upward in the beginnings of a smile. They began to walk again, and the mass of people surrounding them filled in the silence for the second time; although this silence was much more comfortable. He wanted to say something to her that would both satisfy his selfish curiosity for her past and make her feel better, but the words refused to come and he suddenly realised that he was okay with not knowing. For the time being, at least. Lisbon would tell him when she was ready, and he knew how to wait.

They continued to drift through the street-side, cars honking on the busy road to their left. Jane estimated that they were approximately a block away from 'LAVA', and smiled to himself when he realised Lisbon hadn't brought up the fact that they'd been out at least an hour. After a minute or two had passed, his natural urge to speak began to threaten, and so he began with the only safe topic that he could come up with.

"So what do you think?" he asked. "Who killed Tyler?" Lisbon was noticeably more comfortable with this topic than the last, and he was glad as she took another sip of coffee before replying.

"Well, Nathan Whitlock certainly looks the part," she said, before looking over at him. "What do you think?"

"No idea," he smiled, which was mostly true. He wasn't particularly sure if he agreed with her opinion, but he wasn't going to argue with her. He might later, but for now he'd steer clear of anything that might upset her. "It could be him."

"But what I don't get," Lisbon continued, "is how he managed to manipulate her. Like Rigsby said, he had to have threatened her with something to get her to withhold information from the police. It couldn't have been Sam, because now there'd be no threat and no reason to hide anything. Right?"

"Right," he concluded. They turned the corner into a sidestreet, and what looked to be a primary school appeared on their right. The number of people around them was reduced to only a few, and a peaceful quiet slowly dawned on them as they got further and further away from the main street. The tall structure of 'LAVA' loomed in the near distance, as did work. Jane sighed and attempted to create something from the words whirring around his mind like tiny paper planes. The threat had to be something or someone that Heather would do anything to protect. Not Sam, as Lisbon had just established, and not someone from her past life as Lucy; it wasn't likely, anyway. Not anyone at the hotel casino, because Heather had claimed that she barely knew anyone there besides Jackson, and Jane believed her. Not the twins, obviously, because he and Cho had seen them yesterday, coming home from school..

_School_. Jane's eyes darted to the primary school ahead of them, and after a moment he stopped moving, stopped breathing, and his heart began to quicken. The tiny paper planes had finally settled at the bottom of his mind; finally let him unfold them to uncover the answers. And now that he had those answers, everything suddenly made perfect sense.

Oh, god.

How could he possibly have missed it?

"Jane?" Lisbon had paused a few steps ahead of him, turning back behind her with a quizzical expression hinting at excitement, probably because of the realisation that was, no doubt, all over his face. But he didn't care to analyse her at that moment, and caught up to her quickly as the words began to pour out of his mouth.

"Yesterday," he began, his voice rushed, "when Cho and I were at Heather's house. Halfway through the interview, the twins came home from school."

"And?" Lisbon asked, anticipation beginning to cloud her common sense as she looked at him, expecting something more. To think, that all she needed to do was contemplate the fact he'd just presented her with.

"_School_. Think about it. What's wrong with this picture?"

Lisbon tore her eyes from his and stared through the fence to her right, across the abandoned playground to the building rising tall from the ground. Jane stared intently at her, alert and impatient for the moment when she would realise. Think, Lisbon. The answer is right there. And, after a few moments, the moment surfaced. Lisbon straightened and turned to meet his stare, her mouth hanging slightly open in shock as she realised.

"There was no school yesterday. It was a Saturday."

"Exactly," he smiled triumphantly. Lisbon continued to stare, theories and thoughts swirling around her head at an incredible speed.

"They were in their school uniform.."

"To make it look like a normal day," Jane finished for her. "So nothing would seem suspicious."

"But why would Heather forget.." Lisbon hesitated, and her eyes widened as she continued to stare at Jane, "..it wasn't her." He shook his head slowly as the pieces, one by one, slotted into place. She looked down for a moment as she thought aloud.

"But then.."

"I hear marijiuana can erase simple everyday details from a person's mind," he informed her, and met her stare once more as she snapped her head up and gasped. A second of silence followed as she tossed her coffee into the nearest bin and he began to order his thoughts. What to do next, what to say, where to go..

"The threat," she finished. As she did, her phone sounded, and Jane watched as she fished it hurriedly out of her pocket and flipped it open, checking the caller ID before shoving it to her ear.

"Van Pelt, there's.."

Jane could hear Grace's calm voice filtering through the phone, but only for a split second before she was cut off.

"_Van Pelt_." Lisbon glanced up at Jane, fire in her eyes, and it made him smile for a reason he'd question when he had the time to fathom an answer.

"Wherever the guys are, tell them to get their asses back to 'LAVA'. Nathan's kidnapped the twins."

* * *

Wayne Rigsby shifted his weight slowly against the table he leant on and sighed impatiently. Waiting was a bitch. As also was an empty fridge, like the one in Lisbon's adjoining room; and, more recently, interstate cases. Especially when they involved kidnappings and casinos. He stifled a yawn and Grace's lips twitched upward from where she stood beside him. Across the room, Cho stood almost statue-like, arms crossed, and Rigsby would have assumed his mind to be somewhere else, had his next words not been so irritatingly Jane-like.

"Why are _you_ so tired?"

Out of all the questions he could ask. Rigsby's head jerked up and he fought the urge to glance at Grace, which would so pathetically provide a clue. His heart quickening a little, he composed himself and replied with the first sentence that formed itself and reached his mouth.

"I, uh..the bed, sucked."

Cho looked at him for a long moment as the room fell silent.

"Whatever, man," he said finally, and turned to the television for no reason that Rigsby could think of. And, frankly, he didn't care much. Tilting his head, he turned slightly toward Grace to see her bite her lip in a fairly impressive effort not to smile. The action relaxed him subconsciously, and he looked down to the floor as he let out the breath he'd been holding.

"I hate this case," he was eventually confined to mumbling.

"I don't like it, either," Grace breathed in reply. "That poor Lucy Donovan. She must have been living in so much fear."

Rigsby turned to look at her questioningly.

"What are you talking about?" he asked. "It's because she lied to the CBI that Tyler is dead."

"And she almost died for it too," Grace stated, meeting his gaze with a sad expression that left him restraining himself from reaching out to hold her. "It's terrible."

"I know," he agreed. "We could be back in California by now."

Grace frowned disapprovingly and spoke in a defensive tone.

"That's not what I meant."

He knew that. He was only half-joking.

But before he could convince her otherwise, the doorknob turned, and both he and Grace straightened automatically as Lisbon flew into the room, Jane sauntering in a few steps behind her; Cho moved to stand next to Rigsby as all previous thoughts flung themselves to the back of everyone's minds.

"_Please_tell me we have something," Lisbon began almost angrily, and Rigsby idly wondered whether she was sick of Nevada as well. After a moment, he cleared his throat.

"Cho and I went back to Sloan to talk to Whitlock's neighbours," he announced, and Boss turned her attention to him.

"Anything?"

"Well, they did notice a car leave the house around five minutes before we arrived. Red pick-up truck. They've seen it there every day, so we can probably assume it's his. Never took note of the plates, though." He watched as Lisbon's expression transformed from somewhat eager to somewhat disappointed.  
"Anything else?"

A moment passed, before he shook his head slowly, wishing he had more.

"Sorry, Boss." He said it as an afterthought, a response to her strange sense of urgency.

"So we have nothing," Lisbon stated, grimacing. "Nathan and the twins are just going to disappear."

"Not nothing," Grace spoke up suddenly from beside him, and all eyes turned to her as she continued. "I went through the Donovan case again, and I found something. Three years ago, Lucy Donovan filed a restraining order against one Nate Paterson. I checked the date; it was three weeks before Matthew was shot."

"That's right," Lisbon mused as she remembered. "Nate, Nathan. It's possible."

"You haven't heard it all yet," Grace told her. "I did some more digging, and it seems that Nate disappeared as well. A week after Lucy did; no forwarding address, no credit card statements, no nothing. He vanished."

"He went looking for her again," Rigsby realised, his heartrate slowly rising as the answers began to form.

"And he found her," Lisbon finished, and the room descended into a tense silence as Rigsby tried to wrap his mind around the fact that Nathan Whitlock was Nate Paterson. When he realised that a question was preventing him from understanding fully, he proceeded to ask it.

"But why would Nate have the twins pretend to be at home? Why would he risk being caught just so things can look normal?"

"It's all part of his game," Jane suddenly answered him, his eyes lowered to the floor in thought before he glanced up and took a step forward. "He thinks he's invincible, because we didn't get him last time. And now he's rubbing it in our faces. Giving us everything on a plate, but not letting us see it. What better game is there?"

"Son of a bitch," Lisbon muttered. Rigsby, on the other hand, allowed his mind to whirl, and another question formed itself. Nate was stalking Lucy; that much they knew in concrete. But rarely did a stalker ever not know their targets at all. There had to be a connection.

"How did Nate and Lucy know each other?" he asked Grace, who tapped a key on her laptop and eventually looked up.

"He was her gardener."

"Ah," Jane exclaimed. "The ultimate domestic romance."

Rigsby paused and frowned as he questioned Jane's logic for what could never have been the first time. He glanced at Lisbon, who was more openly doing the same, raising her eyebrows in defiance.

"Why would anyone have an affair with their stalker?" she asked, and all attention diverted to Jane for the answer he would no doubt give them in style. And he rarely disappointed.

"Well, obviously, he wasn't her stalker _during_ the affair," he began, his words directly mainly at Boss. "Think about it. Matthew Donovan was at the casino at all hours. Always working. And Lucy," he lowered his voice dramatically, "Lucy wasn't. So we can assume she's sitting in her house with a glass of wine; bored, lonely, in desperate need of affection. Right?"

Lisbon's eyes flickered to Cho's face, then Rigsby's and then Grace's, before returning to Jane's.

"We're with you so far," she prompted for him to go on.

"So there's a very nice man who comes three times a week to trim the hedges," Jane continued. "And her need to be loved overcomes her one day, and she can't take it. So she goes outside, and strikes up a conversation with him while he works. Unaware of the consequences."

"So, they have an affair," Rigsby skipped ahead, impatient. "Then what?"

Jane looked at him as if he was surprised that he hadn't figured it out yet.

"Six months later," he replied, "Lucy's conscience returns. She tells Nate she doesn't want to keep lying to her husband. She tells him she can't hurt Matthew anymore. But Nate," his voice changed, "has other ideas. And he's less than formal about it. So she fires him, and gets the restraining order as a precaution. Grace?"

The room shifted gazes to Grace as she scrolled down the page a little and read intently.

"Nate left the Donovan's service three days before the restraining order was filed," she confirmed, locking eyes with Jane and thinking aloud. "So Nate kills Matthew so he can be with Lucy?"

"Precisely," Jane smiled, and broke her gaze to draw the rest of the room back into his fabrication. "Lucy knows it was him. She's never been more sure of anything else in her life. But when she confronts him, he threatens to kill her too unless she keeps quiet. Of course," he added under his breath, "he wouldn't actually kill her. He loves her too much."

"He almost killed her this morning," Cho reminded them.

"We're not up to that yet," Jane smiled, and went on. "She's terrified, so she does what he says. He's got no reason to hurt her if she obeys, right? So, she lies to the CBI," he glanced at Lisbon, who, strangely enough, looked down, "and the case is cold. But she makes a plan. She knows what will happen if things simmer down and she's still there. She's not entirely oblivious."

"So she disappears," Cho finished from beside Rigsby. "Moves away, changes her name. Fresh start. Then what?"

"Well, he's furious, obviously. He killed a man to be with her, and now he has no idea where she is. That's probably when he got into drugs. Maybe he gives up, maybe he doesn't. But one day, three years later, he finds her. Maybe by accident, but he's still found her. More than that, he's found her _married_. To another casino owner who will leave her feeling just as lonely and unwanted as Matthew did. And all Nate's suppressed rage," Jane's voice narrowed down to a whisper, "suddenly comes rushing back."

"So why doesn't he just shoot Sam and be done with it?" asked Rigsby, confused. "Why does he go to the trouble of a kidnapping?"

Jane turned his head to stare at Rigsby for a long moment, and Rigsby got the weird and unnerving feeling that he'd said something wrong. After the moment had passed however, Jane simply sighed and turned back toward Lisbon, a smirk playing across the edge of his features. Lisbon herself crossed her arms and slowly opened her mouth, the words seemingly taking longer than usual to come.

"It still doesn't explain where the hell he is," she finally rallied weakly. Jane cocked his head.

"Well," he replied, "we know he's probably high, if the contents of his kitchen table are anything to go by. If he _is_ high, we can also assume that he is mentally unstable, thanks to his current situation. Throw in two ten-year-old boys, and what picture comes to mind?"

"We _don't_ know," Boss groaned, evidently at her wit's end.

"Neither do I," Jane announced, his smirk suddenly exploding into a mocking grin as Lisbon's cell began to ring and she reached for her pocket grumpily. "I'm just thinking out loud. You all chose to listen."

But as Lisbon answered her phone, Rigsby realised he highly doubted Jane's words; he'd learnt all too quickly from past experiences that listening to Jane's reasoning, while a long shot at the time, was worth listening to. And this time was proving itself to be no exception. Nate had seemingly killed both Donovan and Tyler in an effort to get Lucy for himself. It was an entirely plausible motive, the jealousy factor, and one that would never die out. It would never have worked, though, Rigsby knew. He bleakly remembered a time little over a year ago, when a blind Jane had stated that women like a man that would kill for them. True enough, to an extent.

But what if said woman was in love with the person they killed?

What if she'd been in love twice?

Before Rigsby could ponder further, Lisbon flipped her cell closed and slowly glanced up, and his first impression of her was that she appeared to be in shock. She opened her mouth a few times but failed to speak; her eyes distant and an incredulous expression woven into her features. Rigsby turned and shared a baffled look with Grace, who eventually stood up and cleared her throat.

"Boss?" she started. "Who was that?"

Lisbon's eyebrows furrowed together as she turned her full attention to Grace.

"They found Nate Paterson," she informed them.

Adrenalin began to surge through Rigsby's veins, and he fought to keep back a smile as it dawned on him. They had him; the case was over. Jane would run through the details to Nate and he would cave, as everyone did; they'd arrest him, charge him, and that would be it. He felt like he hadn't seen California in weeks. It had been so easy. Almost too easy, and he didn't care.

"Confession time, Boss?" he asked, trying and failing miserably to smother the excitement in his voice. But suddenly, something clicked in his mind as Lisbon moved to face him, and as he saw the insane amount of disbelief in her eyes, he realised something.

"Hardly," she replied.

It seemed almost too easy, because it_ was _too easy. Lisbon swallowed.

"He's been placed in a freezer at the hospital where Lucy is. He killed himself."

* * *

_That, ladies and gentlemen, was the result of an entire night high on life after 'Bleeding Heart'.  
Same deal applies as with the last chapter; you review mine, I'll review yours.  
The chapters should come faster, now; the worst of the writing block is over, I think.  
Talk to you in less than a week, hopefully!_

_Jess =] ._


	7. Patience

_I am being a total jerk, what with my snail-pace updates and all. Come on, you can admit it. So, I've made a pact with myself. One update a week, or no episode on Monday! It's harsh. But I was hardly writing it, and I felt terrible because there is this really great story in my mind, but I'm too stuffed to write it down, so I'm pulling out the extremes. Haha. Oh, and one other thing. My review for review rule has ended in me being introduced to some amazing stories from you guys, and I'm following most, if not all, of the stories I read because you reviewed this! It's incredible. So I'm making a new deal. Review my story, and I'll add you to my Author Alerts. That'll end in way more than one review, I can assure you. It's a win win! Sorry about the massive A/N, by the way. Here's Chapter 7. Hope you enjoy!_

_I don't own the Mentalist or anyone associated with it._

**Chapter 7: Patience.**

The parking lot of Clark County Hospital looked no less forlorn from inside. The fragility of the car windows glaring from the incessant onslaught of a midday sun; the white concrete lines faded almost to the point of being invisible. But Kimball Cho didn't notice these things; his eyes had immediately been drawn to, and had since never strayed from, the vehicle parked third from the left. The vehicle that had brought them both the break and the dead end in the case.

A red pick-up truck.

Cho turned away from the window and blinked in reaction to yet another repeat of the hospital cameras depicting Nate shooting himself. He'd seen it enough that he figured he'd probably be able to recite every detail, would it ever be needed again. Nate had been ushered into the room, Lucy's room, by the nurse standing across from him now. Short, plump, brunette. Nate had headed straight for the armchair beside the bed and immediately proceeded to take one of Lucy's hands in his, his face never turned from hers, even when the nurse left a few minutes later. The following twenty or so minutes had been as if the tape were paused; Nate still and quiet, never talking, never once moving. Then, suddenly, almost half an hour after entering the room, he'd slowly withdrawn his hand from hers, and reached into the black backpack he'd brought with him. His hand had emerged with a single folded up piece of paper, which he'd gently placed on the white sheet covering Lucy's stomach. Nate had then risen and leant forward to place a simple, soft kiss on her lips, before his hand returned to his backpack to grasp the gun now resting in an airtight bag on the table in front of Cho. The murder weapon.

_Bang._

"It sure doesn't get any easier to watch," commented the nurse, as Nate's body spasmed slightly and then slumped in the chair, the gun slipping from his palm and the blood already beginning to soak his light shirt. The nurse burst in as the weapon clattered to the floor, her gasps rising to a shaky cry for help as she rushed over to the bed.

"No, Ma'am," replied Van Pelt sadly, from where she leant on an abandoned table, and Rigsby uncrossed his arms from where he stood a few feet to the left of her. Lisbon and Jane had since left the room to inspect the body, almost fifteen minutes ago now. The camera paused as the nurse pressed a slightly trembling finger to the machine, and as she turned to acknowledge the three agents.

"I should never have left the room," she broke the silence, speaking more to herself than to anyone else as she fidgeted with her collar.

"It's not your fault, Ma'am," Rigsby reassured her. "This guy was wanted for assault, drug possession, kidnapping and possibly murder. He was dangerous. There was nothing you could have done."

There probably was, but Cho wasn't about to voice that opinion as the nurse looked down at her feet.

"Susan," she muttered, quietly at first, but then a little stronger. "Call me Susan."

"Susan." Cho had the feeling they would achieve nothing in relation to the case by making her feel better about herself, and so decided to move the conversation along. "How did he seem when he came in? Nervous? Unstable in any way?"

"I don't think so," answered the nurse, slowly, carefully. "He was fine. A little quiet..a little depressed, come to think of it, but I just put that down as being sad for his-" Susan's words faded off as she glanced up slowly, alarm hinting in her eyes and a slow, miserable realisation spreading across her face.

"-girlfriend." Her voice was small as she finished, and as her eyes flickered around the room in dread.

"Assualt charges," she almost whimpered. "She wasn't his girlfriend, was she."

"No," Cho replied bluntly. Susan's breath caught in her throat as she raised her head to stare at him for a long moment, before excusing herself with a tremble in her voice as she near fled the room. Once gone, Cho turned to find another two sets of eyes on him.

"What?" he asked. Van Pelt glanced at Rigsby, who smirked, to which she rolled her eyes and looked pointedly back at Cho, who, after a moment, sighed and turned to leave the room. He wasn't going to stand around worrying about such pointless things when there were so many new questions to answer.

Such as, where the hell were the twins?

"Anything?" Lisbon almost begged upon meeting them in the hallway. Her eyes shone with desperation, and Cho wasn't blind. He was, however, stained with a strange sense of pride as he conjured up Nate's letter and witnessed her features change slightly.

"Hidden camera almost certainly proves that Paterson was the writer," he informed her as they began to walk. "Placed it on her bed around a minute before he died. It was meant for her." Lisbon's urgency increased as he spoke, her actions slightly more erratic as she unfolded the letter. Expectant silence followed, and then she began to read.

"_Lucy,"_ she began, her voice soft and monotonic, _"by the time you read this, I will be dead, and you will be free to live without fear. Surprised? You think I don't know that you're scared of me? I've seen it in your eyes, in everything you say and everything you do. And you have no idea how much it kills me."_

"She does now," Jane commented offhandedly, and both Lisbon and Cho hesitated momentarily in their tracks to look at him. The quiet of the hospital walls around them was overbearing as they turned the corner to the hallway which contained Lucy. Lisbon eventually returned her gaze to the white of the paper and continued.

_"It's been three years since you let me into your life, and three years since I realised I never wanted to be out of it. I love you. And I'll never really be able to make you understand how sorry I am for doing what I did. Because I am sorry; for killing Matt, for making you lie. For getting you here in this bed, almost killing you because you made me face what I've always been telling myself is a lie. When you ran away, everything fell apart. Everything. You, of all people, should understand what it's like when the person you love is never there. You, of all people, should understand the anger. It's my only excuse."_

When Lisbon then paused, Cho glanced back behind him to find her eyes frozen to the page and her shoes nailed to the floor.

"What's it say?" asked Rigsby, his tone etched in the beginnings of dread. Boss swallowed hard, before her next misery-filled words triggered a long and sickening silence.

"_The twins are with their mother now, and you're free to reclaim your life. I'll never stop hoping that it will be enough that maybe, one day, you can begin to forgive me. And maybe then, I'll be able to forgive myself as well. Goodbye, Lucy. Nate."_

The twins were with their mother. Cho didn't ignore the irony in Nate's words; nor did he like it at all. What was safer than being with your mother? Very little, or at least was the opinion. Cho didn't share it; incidentally, he felt like punching the nearest wall. Safe. Being safe was a myth.

Because this particular sentence didn't mean the twins were safe.

It meant they were dead.

The silence stretched on as Cho entered Lucy's room, closing the door behind the rest of the team. Lucy's wispy blonde hair lay flat on the crisp white pillow, her breathing even according to the incessantly beeping heart-rate monitor to the right of her. The armchair was gone; the floor bare in front of the bed, apart from a black backpack resting lightly against the bedframe. All agents subconsciously moved to various places in the room, as they always did. Cho found himself standing next to Lisbon, who, he realised, had certainly looked better. She raised a hand to wipe at the dark bags lining her eyes, and slowly opened her mouth to break the silence. However, Van Pelt beat her to it from the chair on the other side of the bed.

"Maybe they're not dead," she challenged, her eyes lingering on Lucy's face. "Maybe Nate was bluffing."

"Or maybe he's been one step ahead of us the entire time." Lisbon's words, soft though they were, dripped with a certain amount of bitterness, and Van Pelt glanced up.

"We can't just assume the worst," she countered, the strength of her words causing the entire team to turn and look at her. There was a strange glint of determination in her eyes that contrasted noticeably with the haunted feeling of failure shared by everyone else, and for a second Cho wondered bleakly exactly what drove her. But before his thoughts could process, Lisbon sighed.

"You're right," she muttered, before her chin edged higher into the air and her stance straightened. "Okay, let's go back the beginning. One dead body at a time."

"At least we definitely know that Nate shot Donovan," offered Rigsby, and Cho was satisfied enough to consider this corner of the case solved. He didn't know about the likes of Jane, but he felt inclined to believe what the letter had to say.

"Speaks for itself, it does." Lisbon took a deep breath before moving on. "And you're sure this one was definitely a suicide?"

"Positive." Cho had encountered many a tampered with camera before, and as he ran through the scene forever scratched into his brain (he knew it would prove handy for something) he uncovered no unexplainable glitches or audio. As far as he could tell, Nate's death was exactly as had been portrayed by the tape. If only every death was as easy to solve as watching the camera recordings, Cho mused. Unfortunately, Van Pelt had informed them yesterday that the cameras positioned to record Sam Tyler's hotel room had been conveniently switched off.

"Something doesn't make sense, though," Cho heard, and he closed off his thoughts to discover that they were Lisbon's words. Her eyes were on Lucy, her fingers tracing patterns into the letter she still held.

"Nate's just knocked the woman he loves unconscious. According to the doctor, there were traces of marijiuana in his system, so he's definitely high. He's got two ten-year-old boys in the house, and their mother on the floor." Her gaze flickered to Jane, her question clearly directed toward him.

"So how the hell could he have the mindset to write a letter?" she asked.

Jane didn't answer right away, and no-one else spoke, Cho's simple reason being that he couldn't answer the question despite that exactly the same thought had recently begun to nag.

"Because drugs affect every mind differently," he eventually said, "depending on what they want to do. They're confused, they panic, everything spirals out of control all too quickly. But Nate knew exactly what he wanted to say to Lucy. The words would have been all he'd been thinking about for months. Years, even. Thoughts as concrete as those are almost impossible to forget. Even high."

Lisbon's confirmation of the amount of logic in his words amounted to a slow nod. Cho's conscience considered it to be a little far-fetched, but he was willing to accept anything if it meant the case would be over soon.

For the first time, it appeared, Lisbon's eyes suddenly fell on the backpack in front of her. The murder weapon had evidently been the only object to raise the question of fingerprints. Boss cocked her head and Cho responded to her curiosity.

"It was his," he told her. Lisbon looked it over for a second, before she turned and thrust the bag into the arms of a startled Rigsby.

"Check it out," she ordered roughly, to which she earned an obedient nod as Rigsby unzipped the bag and began to sift through it. Cho, tired of standing without purpose and needing something to do, opened his mouth to ask for orders, but as a small gasp emitted from the corner he diverted his attention back toward the bed.

"It wasn't about the drugs," Van Pelt breathed, and Cho mentally questioned whether her eyes had left Lucy at all in the past ten minutes. He then pushed that thought aside as she looked up, and paid attention to her words.

"Lucy didn't go to Sloan to get Nate to give up the drugs," she continued, her whisper barely audible. "She went there to stand up to him."

A hush fell over the room as Cho thought about this. Lucy, telling Nate that she couldn't lie anymore, that he couldn't just take her kids away like he'd taken both her husbands. Telling him that she was taking the twins and he couldn't do a thing about it, or at least he couldn't according to her; Nate grabbing her by the wrist when she went to leave, her saying something that cuts so deep it reduces him to violence…

But they still didn't know what she'd said to push him over the edge; they probably wouldn't find out until she woke up, if at all. Granted, it had no relevance to the direct question of the past two days, to who killed Sam Tyler. But Cho was still curious. After all, her very words had been an underlying cause as to Nate's death, and if that had no relevance then nothing did.

"I'm going to go talk to the nurse who found him," Lisbon announced out of nowhere, turning toward the doorway. "Something's got to come up. Nurse..Moran, was it?"

"Susan," Cho corrected her without realising it. Lisbon glanced at him in acknowledgement, a moment before the doorway swallowed her whole and the only sound became the constant rhythm of the heart-rate monitor. Beep. Beep. Beep.

"Check this out," Rigsby eventually began, and Cho looked over the bed to find a cell phone, more than likely Nate's, working steadily under his fingers. "Nate's made over a dozen phone calls in the past week to an unknown number. No noticeable pattern, apart from that whoever it was never picked up before midnight."

"You sure it wasn't to Lucy?" quelled Jane.

"Nope," he said after a moment, an eerie smile accompanying his words. "She's in the phonebook."

"That's so wrong," Van Pelt grimaced.

"Call it," Cho pressed, impatient for answers. Rigsby wordlessly obeyed, pressing a button and raising the cell to his ear as the room fell to a whisper. One moment, two. Cho could hear his heartbeat quicken a little, anticipation clouding his thoughts as to who would answer the phone. An already suspect? A complete stranger? The accomplice? The murderer?

"Hello?" Rigsby's startled greeting sent a chill through Cho's veins. Obviously, it was a far cry from who he had been expecting.

"Who is this?" In his peripheral vision, he saw Jane and Grace share a look of muted excitement.

"Uh, hi Daisy," Rigsby said, and Cho eyed him in confusion. "My name is Wayne."

Wayne. He'd used his first name. As the pieces slowly fell into place, Cho found himself barely able to suppress a smile, a weak restraint that grew even weaker as Van Pelt began to smirk.

"How old are you?" Rigsby asked, and a few seconds later, he interrupted the response. "Daisy, I can't see how many fingers you're holding up. Can you say it out loud for me?" Silence, an expectant pause. "Wow, six. That's a big number."

Cho didn't bother to mask his smile anymore as Van Pelt broke into an amused grin. Jane, on the other hand, hardly seemed to find the conversation even remotely funny, his smile somewhat forced and his eyes tilted down. Cho dismissed his demeanour without question, though; this was too good to miss. Rigsby shot him a glare when their eyes met, and the innocent babbling of a little girl could be heard on the end of the line. She was interrupted a second later.  
"Daisy, can you tell me where you are?" he asked over-politely, and waited a few seconds; Cho began to compose himself once more when he realised this was an answer he wanted to hear. He locked eyes with Rigsby, who repeated the description as Daisy gave it.

"A big building with writing on the side," he quoted. Cho's heart leapt, and suddenly there was nothing amusing and everything anticipating about the situation. Rigsby, too, sensed it's importance and once again cut off whatever it was the little girl was jabbering about.

"Can you tell me what the writing says?" he asked. After a moment, he looked up quickly. "It has two A's in it? Are you sure?" Daisy's voice filtered through the phone again. "The whole alphabet, huh? Your Mom must be proud." Rigsby paused then, and slight confusion grazed his expression as a thought struck him. "Actually, Daisy, where _is_your Mom?" A second later, his voice rose. "No, don't hang up.." A barely audible click ended the conversation, and Rigsby flipped the cell shut, his previous immaturity gone with the six-year-old.

"_Big building with writing on the side._ Sound familiar?" he smiled.

"A pay phone outside 'LAVA'." It was the sentence that made the most sense to Cho, and, apparently, to Van Pelt, who nodded.

"One of the staff?" she thought aloud. "Jackson?" Her thoughts mirrored Cho's, but before he could voice so, Rigsby uttered the question that was deemed to be the underlying current of the theory.

"What if Nate..had an accomplice?" he put forward, his eyes glistening. Cho pondered the thought of Nate having an inside connection; someone who could get him into Tyler's hotel room, who knew when he would be alone, vulnerable. Cho's eventual decision of it being incredibly possible sent his thoughts racing. What if they had the twins? What if they weren't dead, as was likely the case? What if…

"Of course." Jane's soft self-confirmation pulled Cho from his onslaught of epiphonies, which he was quite annoyed about. However, as he glanced over to see the wistfulness gone from his face and replaced by sudden realisation, he decided that he didn't care, as long as Jane's next words had them back in California by nightfall. Which, judging by his track record, was more than likely the case.

"Cho," Jane began, and Cho mentally prepared himself to translate the last piece of the puzzle that would no doubt be delivered in code. "Yesterday, when the twins came home from school. They were holding video games, yeah?"

Not the question he'd been anticipating, but he knew the answer nonetheless.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Perfect," Jane muttered. He apparently hadn't heard the question, his gaze intense, and Cho could almost see his thoughts spinning at light speed. A glance to his left uncovered that Van Pelt and Rigsby were as confused and annoyed with Jane's vagueness as he was.

"Jane, what's going on?" asked Rigsby, a curious tone to his voice. There was no point to even being curious, though, Cho had learnt. It just made the situation worse when he refused to tell you in shorthand. And he didn't disappoint.

"We need," he said, "to get to a gaming store." He looked up and locked eyes with Cho, an excitement woven into his features that failed to reflect in Cho's eyes. Probably due to the fact that he had no idea what Jane was on about.

"Why?" he asked, although he didn't really expect an answer. Jane paused, before a slow and steady grin began to stretch across his face, and Cho expected it to end there; expected him to leave the room without another word and give them no choice but to follow if they ever wanted to know the answer to their question. He had no idea what possessed Jane to exceed expectations.

"Because the twins aren't dead," he stated.

The next twenty minutes were, for Cho, a blur. He barely remembered following Jane out of Lucy's room with Van Pelt and Rigsby, earning strange looks from some of the medical staff as they close to ran down the hallway; vaguely taking notice of Jane dragging a baffled Lisbon away from Susan and directing her, dazed, toward the exit. Wrenching the CBI van doors open, ripping his seatbelt on, watching Jane turn the key in the ignition and having no time to wonder how he'd ended up at the wheel with Lisbon watching. Hearing the whistle of neighbouring cars as Jane drove way too fast, Lisbon constantly ordering him to tell her where the hell they were going and receiving no answer; the sight of the parking lot allowing them all to breathe as the car screeched to a halt.

Cho was suddenly all too alert as they made their way slowly to the entrance of a gaming store that he still could not even begin to imagine the relevance of. Nevertheless, he was tempted to believe that it was, indeed, relevant, if the energy radiating from Jane was anything to go by. Cho began to grasp his gun, but Jane turned and raised a hand to stop him.

"No need for guns," he simply said. Confident and assured. But Cho kept one hand against the holster anyway, just in case. Better safe than dead, right?  
The glass doors glided open automatically, and as Cho entered the store the icy cold wave of an air conditioner slid over his skin, an action quite similar to that of his eyes as they flew around the small space. Walls lined with various games; technology and accessories that came in an abundance of colours. A check-out was positioned in the corner of the room, the man serving behind it most likely the owner of the building as well. A few people lingered along the walls, their attention drawn to the entrance curiously. Cho wondered if it was because they'd noticed his gun, but then remembered that strangers stood out like neon in a small country town.

It took a moment for the small group at the check-out to register. And when they did, adrenalin pumped itself through Cho's veins at such a rate that he thought he might drown in it. Thought he might lose himself in the realisation that held him at breaking point, that gave him so much that he marvelled at, but hesitated a few words short of the full story. Because they were so close to knowing everything now. Everything.

Two ten-year-old boys leant against the side of the counter, one of them poking the other in the stomach and pointing to Cho in innocent surprise. From an outside view, one would consider them so physically similar that they could be twins. Next to them stood a young woman, her wild dark hair tied back as it had been that morning, her eyes flashing a hundred different emotions as she turned slowly to face the team.

"Hi, Melanie," said Jane cheerfully.

* * *

Patrick Jane sat perfectly still, elbows resting on the table in front of him, fingers intertwined. Patience, he again told himself; across the table, Melanie continued to stare intently into her hands, the past ten minutes of silence appearing to hold no effect on her until the vein in her neck betrayed her act. The door creaked behind him and he allowed himself the ghost of a smile as the smooth paper of a file slid beneath his palms. He felt it alleviate to a smirk when he began to read, and detected the woman's slightly shaken gaze darting to burn into the back of his skull. Metal scraped against floorboard, and when Lisbon was seated next to him, he lifted his eyes to discover the trace of fear that his patience had rewarded him with.

Show time.

"Dainah Clarke," he broke the silence, and Melanie's faintly startled reaction failed to escape him as she leant back in her chair and crossed her arms defensively.

"Who's she?" was the mocking reply, and Jane had to laugh.

"27 from Albany, Georgia," he continued after a moment, choosing to let her question hang as he found and held her gaze. "What's a girl like you doing so far away from home?"

"What, am I not allowed to expand my horizons?" Her words were hard, biting; unfortunately for her, they were also all too predictable. This question, too, remained answered as Jane resigned himself to a slightly different approach.

"You know who else is from Albany?" It was more of a statement than a question; Lisbon leant forward under the dim lights and spoke for the first time.

"We'll give you a clue," she offered bluntly. "You were the last person to see him alive." The woman who had been calling herself Melanie now crossed her legs, her calm façade of innocence in full flight.

"Sam told me he was from Phoenix," she said simply, and Jane once again possessed the urge to ridicule her words. How a person could continue to lie with such naivety was beyond him. He could feel himself grinning as he looked down, pretending to read more of Dainah's past but, in truth, mentally contemplating his plan of attack. Best to corner her from all angles, he eventually decided, and cocked his head rather dramatically.

"But what I don't get," he began, as if the thought had only just struck him, "is how you and Nate Paterson know each other."

"Who?" Dainah's eyes had locked with his questioningly, and a muted sense of self-triumph found him with her expression. Just as he'd suspected. They'd been manipulating each other.

"Nathan Whitlock, he corrected himself, and confirmed his suspicions even further when the telling spark of recognition flickered in her eyes, causing her jaw to clench unknowingly.

"I have no idea who you're talking about," she defended weakly.

"Yes, you do," he informed her, smirking, and when she raised her head in an attempt to stare him down, he gave her a knowing look and watched as her pulse quivered.

"What, is it a crime to know someone?"

"It is when said someone shoots themselves during a homicide investigation." Lisbon's harsh comment achieved instantaneous results as Dainah's knuckles suddenly whitened, and Jane didn't hold any doubt that something had just snapped deep within her. The room fell silent, all for the sounds of her erratic breathing as she looked down into her mindlessly fidgeting hands. An abated version of a grieving loved one, and Jane considered himself experienced enough in the area to put faith in his instincts. Dainah must have cared at least a little about Nate; it explained why she'd trusted him the way she had. He made a strategic decision to keep his thoughts to himself; let her come to him, metaphorically speaking, when she realised she couldn't win.

Meanwhile, Lisbon decided to prod.

"Dainah," she said, "care to explain why two assumed to be dead minors were with you today?"

Too soon. Jane sighed inwardly and glanced to his right to give her a disapproving look, to which she raised her eyebrows. Now he had to try and coax the truth out of her, which would appear to be rather difficult, taking into account the slight trembling of her lip as her untouchable demeanour slowly began to crumble. The poor woman was literally, and emotionally, speechless. It would require a bombshell, something shocking, direct. Luckily, he not only knew the make of the bomb, but exactly where to drop it.

"You want to know what I think?" he asked gently, and while Dainah's eyes were fixed intensely toward the middle of the table, a slight twitch of her head suggested that she'd heard him, at least. He pressed on lightly, straining to detect every shimmer of emotion in her expression.

"I think…the twins are your sons, aren't they?"

The room descended rapidly into a stunned silence; shock and fear radiating from the other side of the table, and an utter disbelief knifing him in the side that would probably translate itself into a glare, had he the stupidity to look. He chose to ignore the latter, focusing instead on the single tear that had escaped Dainah's shattered mask and now slipped silently down her cheek.

"Aren't they?" he repeated in what was almost a whisper. Dainah raised her head to stare at him for a moment, before she slowly nodded. Lisbon inhaled sharply from beside him, and he tilted his head to discover that her disbelief had been overrun by bewilderment and a hint of awe that she would deny later. He smirked at her, a preview of the teasing she would receive when the moment came, and then turned back as Dainah cleared her throat, finding her voice at last.

"When I was seventeen," she muttered rawly, "Sam seduced me, and I fell pregnant." She chose the moment to lean forward and place her head in her hands, and Jane uncovered a hint of a larger regret as she did so.

"You didn't tell him?" he asked. Dainah shook her head.

"No. I thought…" she swallowed hard, "…I thought I could handle it. But then, I found out that it was twins, and…I just couldn't do it. I didn't want to be a mother. So I called Sam," her voice erupted with the promised waves of regret, "and we made a deal."

"He would take away the twins," Jane helped her along, "and you would be free to live your life."

"It's perfect," she mused, and took a deep breath, dread now stained to her skin. "But then," she faltered slightly, eyes distant, "I had two beautiful boys, and I looked into their faces, and…" her voice broke as another small tear escaped, "…and I didn't want them to go. But the papers were signed and there was nothing I could do. Just like that, they disappeared. Sam never even talked to me."

Her last words were filled with a sudden coldness, and it became apparent that she would not, could not, continue without some encouragement. Jane opened his mouth to speak, but Lisbon beat him to it.

"Then what?" she prompted, her restless hands giving away her eagerness. Dainah glanced up at her before continuing.

"Well," she said, "I tried to move on with my life." A sad, nostalgic smile graced her features as she remembered. "I wanted to be…"

"An air hostess," Jane finished for her, and her eyes met his in unspoken alarm, but she must have allowed her surprise to pass because, a second later, she nodded, and her smile slipped as she continued.

"But every time I did something, all I saw was their faces. And then I was in Vegas last year," her eyes flashed with either anger or jealousy as her jaw set, "and…I read in the paper that Sam had got married to some _bitch_," she almost hissed, "who thought she was their mother. So I looked up his number, and I called him."

"Bet he refused to hear any of it," Jane chuckled dryly, his aim to make Dainah more comfortable in her surroundings, and it appeared to work as she offered him a wry smile.

"Told me he was happy," her words were forced, "and that I'd ruin everything. I wanted to take it to court, but…" she lowered her head, "…Sam was so much more connected. I didn't stand a chance."

"And so, Melanie was born," Jane said, sensing Lisbon's sudden increase of interest to his right. He decided to elaborate. "You changed your name, dyed your hair, had some work done…"

"I put on an accent, too, when I was with him."

"You didn't think he'd recognise you?" asked Lisbon skeptically. Dainah raised her head to observe her for a moment before answering.

"We only saw each other twice. And I figured, no-one can have that good a memory, right?" Her eyes flickered to his in exasperation, perhaps in need of assurance; but Jane decided to hold his peace, and she eventually recollected her train of thought.

"It worked perfectly," she breathed. "I got a job at 'LAVA', and within a few months…I'd seduced him. Never even suspected it was me. After the first night, he told me that he couldn't do it to Heather, but then he came back. He always came back. And that," she sighed, "is something I'll never be able to figure out."

"It's the casino owner coming out in him, I'd expect," Jane commented, realising the nonchalance in his tone, and yet doing nothing about it. Dainah hadn't appeared to have heard him, though, her eyes wandering through the events of some other day, some other place. Her next words confirmed his observation.

"It didn't work, though," anger had seeped into her voice again, "because he still wouldn't leave her for me. I'd still never be a mother." Her expression, though, remained vague and distant, and Jane chose once again to help the conversation along.

"And then Nathan comes into the picture, yeah? Turns up at the bar during your shift. And when he offhandedly mentions that your Boss is a greedy bastard," he smirked, "all your hidden anger starts to build up from inside. And you realise the potential. He wanted Heather, you wanted the twins. The only thing standing in the way…"

"Was Sam," she finished, her smirk mirroring his, before she ran a shaky hand through her dark curls and inhaled deeply. "Nathan was going to make sure we didn't get caught. All I had to do was get rid of Sam." Her smirk then vanished, and her next words probably sounded a little colder than she'd intended. "All I had to do."

"You cared about him." Jane had sensed the underlying meaning of her words.

"I couldn't make myself hate him," she muttered in response. "Despite everything, he was…" she stopped herself. "He really cared about the kids. I'd been putting it off. But, two nights ago, he told me…" she closed her eyes gently, "…about his first wife. His _first_." Dainah's fist clenched and the tears returned now, flowing freely as she tensed. "The twins had had two mothers who didn't even deserve to be near them! So…I did it. I shot him."

"Three times in the chest, just like Nathan asked you to."

Dainah nodded slowly at Jane's words, bringing her hands to her cheeks in an attempt to control her emotions. He chose this moment to glance over at Lisbon, and her subtly triumphant smile eased an answering one out of him. He let out the breath he had no idea he'd been holding, and finally allowed himself to comprehend that they'd won. The case was over; Nate had murdered Donovan, Dainah had murdered Tyler, Nate had killed himself. That was as plausible an ending as he'd ever heard.

However, to put things in perspective, there was still one question left for Dainah to ask. He brought his gaze back to discover that she had close to stopped crying and her breathing had returned to something a little more even. One second, two. A little patience was all it ever took. Dainah lifted her gaze to meet his, and opened her mouth hesitantly. As she did, the little voice inside Jane's head chuckled arrogantly, making him smile. Ah, the wonders of predictability.

"How did you know it was me?" she asked shakily. His smile changed slightly into a smirk, and he leant forward.

"Tom Jackson was in love with Melanie," he reminded her. "He was under your spell, Dainah. You could have made him do anything you wanted to; including," he paused dramatically, "tampering with security cameras."

"That's it?" she challenged after a moment, staring at him in disbelief.

"Actually, no," he replied. "The pay phone, you and Nathan used to communicate. It was never used before midnight. And the bar," he smiled, "closes at twelve."

Dainah seemed more resigned to accept this reason, and sighed in defeat as she leant back in her chair. For the first time, Jane allowed himself to observe the bags under her eyes, and when he found himself feeling sorry for her, he realised that her exhaustion reminded him of Lisbon's. He glanced to the right, and something in him felt relieved at her alert demeanour, as opposed to the woman he'd seen earlier that day, in the casino. She looked absolutely fine now, and this relaxed him.

"The boys will go back to Heather, won't they." It was less of a question than a confirmation of Dainah's fears; directed mainly at Lisbon, who nodded gently.

"She _is _their legal guardian. So, yes."

"I did it for them," she muttered, a mix of both misery and peace. But then her eyes flashed as she revealed her last flare of anger. "I'm their only blood relative, for God's sake! I just wanted to be able to see them grow up. Every parent," she faded to a whisper, "every parent deserves the right to see their children grow up."

Her last sentence came unexpectedly, and before Jane could fully process what she'd said, a blood red smiley face clouded his vision and he swallowed hard as he looked down, and suddenly realised that he didn't care whether Dainah had killed a man or not. He still felt sorry for her, simply because he knew what she felt.

"Yes, they do," he agreed softly.

_A little clue as to Chapter 8; Grace/Lisbon's POV. And we finally learn why Lisbon doesn't like casinos!  
I'm updating every Sunday from here on in; that's every Sunday in Australia, so I'm not sure how that works out for America and the like.  
You are amazing for reading this. You will become even more amazing if you review!  
Talk to you on Sunday._

_Jess xx_


	8. Coincidences

_According to my laptop, it's 7:29pm on Sunday night. I'm not sure what day or time it is in any other country, but in Australia, it's Sunday, and I have officially updated on time for the first time ever! I consider that a miracle. And I worked so hard all weekend to get this done. So, whatever time it is for you, this is around the time I'll update, weekly, hopefully. In other news, I've been astounded by the amount of reviewers each chapter, and I would just like to say that I absolutely love you guys for taking the time to tell me what you think! As for the ones who put this story on their alert, as awesome as they are for following this story, it would make me even happier if you'd review as well! Thanks a lot, and onward with Chapter 8! Most of your questions will be answered in this chapter._

_I don't own the Mentalist or anyone associated with it._

**Chapter 8: Coincidences.**

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

The sky had hung itself in wild arrays of pinks and oranges outside the window; inside, Lucy Donovan's finger twitched for the third time in two minutes. Grace Van Pelt leant forward and gently took her hand, just as the doctor had instructed her to. It would help to ease her senses back into their full alertness, he'd said, and she was happy to comply. A flicker in her peripheral vision brought her gaze to Lucy's face, to her fluttering eyelids, black eye dark and ugly in all its glory. Once, twice, and she felt pressure on her hand. Unfocused eyes blinked a number of times before she coughed, and her hand was returned to her as she brought it to her mouth. It was a number of seconds before she realised anyone else was in the room; when she did, Grace cleared her throat.

"Hi Lucy," she breathed softly, and when she was met only by a confused expression, it occurred to her that the woman had not seen her before. "My name is Agent Grace Van Pelt. I'm with the CBI?" Lucy merely stared at her blankly for a second, before realisation set in and she slowly opened her mouth.

"Oh." Her voice was rough and croaky, and she quietly cleared her throat before continuing. "You're with…Cho, and the blonde one."

"Yes." Grace was cautious, careful with her words, unsure of how much this woman suspected, how much she knew. How much she thought they knew. It had seemed a bold beginning to the conversation to address her as Lucy, and Grace wondered if she was alert enough to realise. But then a sudden intake of breath broke the short silence, and her curiosity was quenched as Lucy looked down.

"You know." These two words required no answer, and Grace's very lack of one provided more of a response than if she'd opened her mouth. The air stung with an unexpected sense of guilt, which surprised her because there remained to be no point to feeling guilty anymore. Lucy hadn't killed either of her husbands, and if she ever mustered the courage to get married again, she probably would have the common sense not to kill him as well. But before Grace could continue her train of thought, the heart-rate monitor accelerated slightly as Lucy's eyes widened.

"Nate," she uttered, her panic evident, and Grace noticed her left hand dart to subconsciously trace the patterns of her reddened wrist, straining slightly on the thin tube inserted into her arm. Tears welled in her frightened eyes, but she was understood perfectly, despite her one-worded sentence, as Grace lay a comforting hand on her arm and spoke in a soothing tone.

"It's okay, she assured her lightly, and waited patiently for their eyes to meet, terror to calm, before continuing. "It's fine. Everything's fine. He can't hurt you anymore."

It took a long moment for her words to sink in; for her breath to release in a long shudder, and for her eyes to close as she processed the fact that she was free of her stalker of three years. It must be an incredible feeling, Grace thought, and yet one that she herself would rather not experience. An eerie shiver seemed to sift through Lucy's entire body, and when it had passed her toes, when she had achieved what was a well-deserved and long-awaited state of calm, she opened her eyes.

"How many years will he get?" she asked slowly, cautiously, and her question dripped with relief. Grace glanced down, unsure of how to respond to such an enquiry; whether to tell her the whole story, or merely fragments in the hope of rescuing her from some additional pain. But before she could decide, Lucy was overthrown with a sudden coughing fit, and her question lay forgotten as she lifted herself to a sitting position and struggled for air. When she was, at last, granted with it, and calmed some, Grace proceeded to ask a question that was deemed to be much more relevant, and much more safe.

"How are you feeling?"

"Awful," Lucy replied almost immediately, with an ironic smile that caused an answering grin to wash over Grace's expression. "But," she continued, "I guess I had it coming, saying what I did to a madman." This comment attracted Grace's attention, as the events of this very scenario had been nagging at her subconscious since that morning. Realising her subtle opportunity, she opened her mouth.

"What did you say to him?" she asked, attempting to make the question an off-handed one. Another smile, this time smaller and strangely a little more genuine, found Lucy as she met Grace's gaze calmly.

"I told him I'd never love him like I loved Sam or Matt," she remembered. "Or the…" her words faded into oblivion as she suddenly stiffened. "The boys." Her panic was similar to that of a couple of minutes ago, but noticeably stronger, her maternal instincts taking a crazed hold that Grace automatically admired her for. Lucy's eyes once again were trained on her, praying for the answer she needed in response to her unspoken question. Thankfully, she was to be rewarded with this answer, as Grace smiled kindly and held up her index finger in indication that the woman should wait a moment. She then leant back in her chair, the same chair she'd sat in little over an hour ago, and tilted her head back.

"Rigsby?" she called, clear, crisp. Outside the door, a second passed, before a series of small thumps caused the floor to vibrate, and Grace turned back toward the bed to view Lucy's nervous anticipation. The biting of her lower lip as the doorknob creaked. Slight shock, before a wonderful joy rushed to gleam in her exhausted eyes, the strength so much more powerful and precious than any of her previous fear, which there was now no trace of. Grace smiled and felt the headwind as two ecstatic blurs raced to pile on top of their stepmother. Amidst the maze of arms, legs and tangled tubes, the tears had begun to cascade down Lucy's cheeks with the abundance of a waterfall. But somehow, in between sobs, she managed to lock eyes with Grace and mouth a wet 'thank you'. She was answered with a curt nod, Grace's reason being that she couldn't find the words to explain her muted emotion. How at peace she felt with the fact that Lucy Donovan, the very woman who had, in a sense, helped her become a cop, was no longer the haunted woman on the television three years ago. When Lucy wrapped her thin arms around her sons' shoulders and pulled them impossibly closer, Grace took this as her cue to leave. She rose silently and was met by Rigsby when she turned around.

"You okay?" he asked when they shared a knowing look.

"Yeah," she whispered, and smiled when he held the door open for her.

Upon entering the quiet hospital hallway, she discovered that Cho had been joined by Jane and Lisbon, back from 'LAVA' where they had taken care of the formalities; who were, in turn, joined by an unexpected guest.

"You've got to love a happy ending," commented Tom Jackson, apparently having witnessed the scene that had recently unfolded.

"Yes, you do," Jane agreed, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket as he did. Lisbon glanced at him rather strangely, before she, too, reached for her jacket pocket, and unearthed Nate's letter.

"When she has her emotions under control," she told Jackson, passing him the folded white paper, "give this to her. It would be best if the boys aren't with her when you do." Jackson stared at her a moment, before nodding in compliance and tucking the paper into his shirt pocket.

"Of course," he replied, before extending his arm to shake Lisbon's hand. "And, on behalf of everyone at 'LAVA'-excluding Melanie, obviously-" he half-winced, and Grace felt a pang of pity for him, "we'd like to officially thank you for catching Sam's murderer. If he were here, he'd be extremely grateful."

"If he were here," interrupted Jane, "we would never have left California."

"Just doing our jobs," Lisbon replied, intentionally ignoring the previous comment and accepting Jackson's handshake. Grace, too, chose to dismiss Jane's words.

"Well, here's me doing _my_ job," Jackson said, stepping back and addressing the entire team. "If my geography is correct," he smiled, "then you've got a five hour drive ahead of you. Please, accept our form of repayment. 'LAVA's facilities are open to you all for one more night. Stay tonight, and drive home in the morning."

Grace's stomach dropped rapidly at his offering. Oh, no. Anything but this; anything but the delaying of their return home to beautiful, beautiful California. Her eyes darted to Rigsby's, sharing the same amount of panic, before both flew to Lisbon's face and the world stopped. Boss, evidently all too aware of the four sets of eyes plastered to her, opened her mouth immediately and forced a polite smile.

"Oh, no," she began with a subtle attempt at turning Jackson down, "we couldn't, we really should be…"

"It's the least we can do," she was interrupted, and Grace judged Lisbon's fatal mistake to be the moment where she looked into Jackson's face and caught his dismay. The whole team, sensitive to every word, listening for the one word that she would never let them hear; because, after a moment, she sighed.

"Why not?" she agreed, though her jaw was set and her words somehow cold. Jackson, however, took her response at first glance and smiled brightly.

"Great," he exclaimed, before glancing at the door to Lucy's room. "Now, if you'll excuse me," he continued, "I have some matters to discuss."

As he passed Grace, she received the inhumane urge to trip him up, and after the door had closed with a thud, Rigsby groaned loudly.

"Boss!"  
"I'm sorry!" Lisbon turned and defended herself harshly. "He sprung the 'least we can do' crap. I panicked."

"I _really_ wanted to get back to California," Grace muttered under her breath, unaware of the audibility of her voice until Lisbon turned and glared at her, causing her to flinch involuntarily. Boss then exhaled in a frustrated groan of her own, before exhibiting her only and only emotion that; it seemed, never failed to dominate her whenever she was trapped. Anger at Jane.

"And don't you start!" she almost snarled, to which he acquired an expression of confusion and innocence that would never truly be innocent.

"I didn't say anything!" he defended.

"Exactly my point," she uttered, and, with an agitated look set firmly in place, she pushed past Cho to head toward the entrance. Jane turned to look at Grace, repeating himself in the vain hope of somebody joining his rather lonely side.

"I didn't say anything."

"You know what'll keep you alive tonight?" she asked.

"What?" he grinned. She eyed him seriously.

"Consistency."

* * *

Teresa Lisbon leant heavily against the wall, her eyes closed and her head tilted against the cold surface of the baby blue wallpaper in an attempt to soothe her stubborn headache. A distant pounding of music sent vibrations under her feet, and both hands clenched into fists as she took a deep breath and attempted to steady herself. She really hated, no; utterly loathed feeling this incredibly weak. This vulnerable. Any other person in the world could turn the corner without a second thought; as for the one mind that shut itself down in response to a casino, why the hell did it have to be hers?

Her eyes slowly fluttered open, and she took another long breath, deciding that if she procrastinated any longer, she was certain to send herself insane with dread. She pushed herself back off the wall and ran a white hand through her hair, outraged with herself. Eighteen years. _Eighteen years ago_, and she was still affected by its aftermath. Granted, she had only been fifteen at the time, but things like this weren't supposed to become stronger. They were supposed to numb eventually; they were supposed to fade.

And they would. She slowly unclenched her fists and contemplated; all she was in need of was a mental distraction. The case, think about the case. It was relatively safe, and the facts were set in concrete so that she could produce various pieces of information automatically. She took her last deep breath and gritted her teeth. Now or never. Her every sense tingling in anticipation, she tentatively rounded the corner and immediately rushed her defense into action as the first wave of lights hit her like a brick wall.

_Dainah Clarke killed Sam Tyler._

Machines screamed boldly in triumph and loss from every angle; lights of every colour clouded Lisbon's vision. She took a couple more steps, concentrating shakily when it appeared that she'd heard her mother's voice.

_Nate Paterson was manipulating Lucy Donovan._

And the people. People everywhere, their voices loud, obnoxious, attempting and failing to drown out the machines behind them…the air, stagnant with alcohol…alcohol. Lisbon took another slow step forward and as a waitress strode past with drinks, she reached out and stole one invisibly. Alcohol would most definitely help, and as she raised the glass to her lips and shivered in response to the smooth liquid sliding down her throat, she tilted her head back and downed the whole thing before she could stop herself. And, strangely enough, it worked; the bitter taste lining her tongue, granting her a slight distraction from the chaos surrounding her.

_Sam Tyler was having an affair with Dainah Clarke._

Lisbon stood motionless for a second, mentally testing herself. Mentally pushing the boundaries; observing the pokies, the card tables hiding at the far end of the room, the slots…and God must have decided that she was due for a miracle, because their incessant sirens, their electric tones, all their nightmare qualities suddenly had close to no effect on her. Lisbon felt a triumphant smile pulling at the corners of her mouth, and didn't resist it. She'd been worrying about nothing, she was fine; one might even venture so far as to claim that she was invincible at this present time…

_Heather Tyler was…Lucy…Lucy…_

No. Please, no. Lisbon's fingers tensed around her empty glass; she thrust her eyes shut in a desperate attempt to return to her state of intense calm. But no matter where she searched, where she searched for it in all corners of her conscious, it refused to reply, and she realised with a strangled gulp that she'd lost it. She'd lost her shield. And before she could remember how to create a new one, a stronger one, the high-pitched cackle of a machine clawed its way under her skin, and she opened her eyes fearfully to the hell she somehow thought she could conquer.

Colours, glaring at her from every angle, every shade of the spectrum clashing as they rushed to meet her. Strangers, utter strangers pushing past her violently, unaware of the harshness of their voices, unaware of how every syllable pushed her further and further over the edge…and like a broken record, singing over the top in a strangled pitch, the whimpers of her brothers, the screams of her mother…

And, suddenly, her eyes clasped onto a familiar silhouette, and everything stopped spinning. Jane sat alone next to a slot machine, a reasonably full drink condensating over the bench next to him, and an impressive pile of coins increasing by the minute. Lisbon inhaled sharply and, incredibly, possessed the calm to exhale. On any other day, in any other situation, she would have been furious with herself for allowing herself to simply drift. But this was precisely the effect his presence had over her; in one moment, she had collapsed from utter terror into the depths of utter calm, and every machine, every person, every sound in the room all of a sudden ceased to exist. She wondered bleakly if perhaps he were hypnotizing her, but in the same instant she realised she didn't care, as long as it meant she could forget she was in a casino. Eyes never straying from the back of his head for fear he would disappear, she made her way over.

It took a few long seconds for Jane to notice her; when his eyes finally flickered from the screen before him to acknowledge the apparent stranger who had approached, his initial reaction was surprise. She remained silent, placing her glass beside his on the bench and lowering herself slowly onto the chair to his left. When she mustered the strength to shoot him a questioning glance, he opened his mouth rather hesitantly.

"You all right?" he asked. Lisbon contemplated performing her usual act of confident denial, but then it became apparent to her that she didn't possess the strength nor the patience.

"Not really," she answered truthfully, mindful of his wary reaction. He observed her for a moment, before proceeding to ignore the machine before him, turning his body and his unwavering attention toward her. Lisbon took a deep breath, inwardly smiling as it occurred to her that Jane had, yet again, achieved what he wanted. When would the man ever be wrong? Her smile was closely shadowed by a grimace when she realised that, despite his intolerable arrogance, she didn't want him to be wrong now.

"My mother liked the outdoors," she began tentatively, unsure as to whether she was strong enough for this, but knowing that she couldn't stop now. "So, when my family moved to the city," she continued, "she couldn't handle the stress." Jane was silent, a rarity; his gaze never leaving hers, his emotions unreadable. Lisbon swallowed and took another breath.

"She used…she used to gamble. A lot. She would go to Vegas," she smirked, an action which Jane failed to reciprocate, "and come home days later without telling anyone that she was going. One time…" she faltered, and closed her eyes to preserve any fragment of strength that she might need for her next words. Clenching her jaw as unmistakable moisture welled in her eyes, she forced the next sentence out, word by painful word.

"One time she left for a week and came home at four in the morning, and my father…my father went crazy," she said through gritted teeth, as a lone tear survived halfway down her cheek before she wiped it hurriedly. "Beat her to within an inch of her life," she finished, and for a moment she was once again overcome with the horrible feeling of the darkness of her brothers' room. But as she opened her eyes, the intensity of Jane's gaze immediately erased any thought of the past, and though she hated this fact-hated it with a strong passion-it was all that she could reluctantly cling to.

Jane's only response was to cautiously reach for his drink and slowly pour the remainder of the liquid into her glass. All of Lisbon's previous thoughts fled her mind as she raised her eyebrows, and he chuckled in response.

"You need a drink," was his chosen excuse. She glanced at him a moment, before she shrugged slightly and decided on a whim not to question his offer, raising a hand to her drink and taking a small sip. It was a few seconds and an invisible silence before she noticed that Jane was now taking a deep breath, his eyes rooted to the floor. When he glanced up to her expectant gaze, there was an incredible honesty in his face that Lisbon hadn't seen before. He opened his mouth, and she was suddenly overcome with a strange dread.

"It was five years ago yesterday," he told her simply, and Lisbon's gut lurched. Oh. _Oh_. She looked down, her main reason being that his gaze was beginning to haunt her, and processed this information slowly. It stood as the reason for his disguised misery yesterday morning, back in California; it also explained why he had been roaming Sam Tyler's hotel room in the early hours of the morning. Because, frankly, who the hell could sleep with the knowledge that, five years ago, their family had been murdered? Lisbon suddenly felt terrible; wanting more than anything to be able to say something that would somehow take all his pain away. Wanting to have the answer to all his questions. And also, though she could probably put this down to the glass of alcohol she'd downed earlier, possessing the sudden urge to hug him.

However, the words refused to come, and Lisbon still considered herself sober enough to resist the latter. Therefore, she did the only gesture that made sense. She reached over, and poured what remained of her drink back into his glass.

"You need a drink," she told him seriously. Jane laughed, amused, and she glanced back with a smirk. Suddenly, the machine in front of Jane flashed impatiently, directing his attention back toward the screen and her attention toward the large pile of coins beside his glass.

"How much have you won?" she asked skeptically.

"Stopped counting," he replied.

"You're cheating."

"How so?"

"No-one can win that much in coins on a slot machine."

"Well, I beg to differ."

"It's pure coincidence!"

"No such thing as coincidences. You should know that by now."

"What, no scientific reasoning?"

"Perhaps it just likes me."  
"That's not science. That's arrogance."

Lisbon slowly lost track of how long their banter lasted, or even if it ceased at all. Jane ordered them both another drink, which she polished off within half a minute, and he continued to steal undeserved winnings from the machine, using a method that he refused to explain to her, though she ordered him to many times. Their third round of drinks came, and Lisbon had begun her dazed journey down the light-headed path of becoming drunk, her headache finally ceasing and Jane steadily becoming less of he obnoxious, emotionally shut-down Consultant and more of a complete stranger. And she discovered that despite her conscience continually warning her, she didn't care. She really and truly did not care.

Jane, too, was becoming more and more carefree; his true emotions choosing to grace his surface increasingly more often, until both he and her began to laugh at the most absurd things. Eventually, he let her try her hand at the machine in an attempt to prove that it had been tampered with; ten minutes later, when she had lost almost all of his winnings, he pulled her away with the logical theory that 'maybe it just didn't like her'. She could feel her reactions shifting in slow motion; her every movement projected on a movie screen, which she could watch as much as she wanted to, but had since been deprived of the ability to control, thanks to the obscene amount of alcohol in her bloodstream.

Eventually, a glance at her watch uncovered that it was two in the morning, although she may have read it wrong, and Jane agreed rather reluctantly that it was time to call it a night. However, when she attempted to stand, the room swam and the floor rose rapidly to meet her. Stupid floor. Stupid casino. Although, the lights were very pretty, and her rapidly deteriorating conscience reminded her that she didn't like casinos, but she couldn't remember why, and so she ignored it. The next thing to register was the fact that she was on Jane's back, unaware of how she'd got there, and baffled as to why he could walk, and she could barely see. On any other day, in any other mood, she would severely order him to put her down, but in this case she had no idea which direction was which and where her room was, and so she happily accepted the ride.

Jane, however, possessed an incredibly accurate sense of direction, even under the influence of alcohol, and fifteen minutes later, after countless stumbles and a highly amusing conversation with the janitor, they found themselves in her hotel room. Jane used one arm to open the door to her bedroom and headed for her bed, most believably with the intention of putting her to bed and then finding his way back to his own room. However, as uncooperative fate would have it, when she attempted to fall backwards off his shoulders, gravity intervened, and both she and Jane went tumbling back onto the mattress, laughing, cursing. It was at least a minute before she realised vaguely that their noses were centimetres apart.

Any other day, any other situation, any other mood. Any less consumption of alcohol, and she would be off him before he could blink, in embarrassment or anger or maybe both. But the voice roaming her head had achieved a sore throat from yelling, and her common sense had departed hours ago. Her awareness of the consequences had since ceased to exist, and, of course, there were no consequences in situations without coincidence. No such thing as coincidences, after all.

And so, incidentally, there was nothing at all to prevent her from leaning down to kiss him like she did.

_Well, there we go. Hope you enjoyed it! Don't forget to review._  
_See you next Sunday!_

_Jess xx_


	9. Want

_Well, here we are, just like I said! Thank you to everyone for going crazy with the reviews this chapter; 60 reviews! I'd like to personally thank '__tigerlily 124', for going back and providing feedback for every chapter. This particular direction the story has taken might not agree with everyone, and I respect that; however, this is the direction that I had always meant it to take, and I promise that it will prove to be more fulfilling in the long run. So if you liked it a little, liked it a lot, weren't sure of what you felt or even if you hated it to bits, please review and tell me what you think! I'd love to hear your feedback, and questions about the case or any aspect of the storyline are most welcome, if there is some detail that doesn't sit right with you. Anyway, on with the show. This one's slightly shorter. Enjoy!_

_I don't own the Mentalist or anyone associated with it._

**Chapter 9: Want.**

_Patrick Jane stirred slightly, to the point of vague consciousness; slowly, drowsily, he made sense of his surroundings, and a lazy smile crossed his face as he tightened his hold on the woman sleeping harmoniously beside him. He felt warm sunlight drift across his eyelids, and recognised that it must be morning. Simultaneously, a sliver of dread descended his spine when he realised that they would have to get up for work soon, and in stubborn reply he buried his face in her hair. _

_He had grown sensitively accustomed to her sleeping habits, and so knew now without a doubt that the opening of his eyes would cause her to stir. He was at a loss as to how it worked, but never questioned it; keeping his eyes closed, he allowed his sense of touch to take the reins, aware that her quirk was less of a setback than an insignificant detail. Because he could always see her; boundaries of sight aside, the innocent slope of her nose would never fade from his mind. Her large, expressive eyes; her chinadoll skin. The small, silver 'A' that hung daintily on a chain around her neck. _

_And her hair. Her beautiful, beautiful hair that currently fell in loose, dark waves around both of their faces. His nose lightly trailing the rim of her ear, he inhaled deeply and was surprised to find an earthier, more intoxicating scent, as opposed to the lighter hint of strawberry he'd come to anticipate. She must be trying a new shampoo. He allowed his hand to brush lightly of its own accord down her wrist, and across to the features of her that he loved the most; her hands. Smooth, gentle, loving. Warm and strong, as she unconsciously threaded her fingers through his, and yet so utterly light and dainty when she succumbed to the daily urge to play piano, and granted them the freedom to dance ever so gracefully across the keys._

_But then a coldness washed over him as he hesitated, and an ambitious hope in him wondered if he'd simply imagined it. He repeated his previous action of tracing around her fingers, and sheer confusion took a hold of him when he reached her ring finger. Skin against skin. His mind hadn't been playing tricks on him; she wasn't wearing her wedding ring. And she never took it off for anything._

_Now that he thought about it, her hands in question felt different as well. Smaller, rougher, more weathered, perhaps with experience. He wrenched the thought from his mind and concentrated forcefully on the line of her neck. However, the coldness alleviated when he discovered she wasn't wearing her necklace either. The overpowering urge to open his eyes, to answer his questions, was becoming almost impossible to resist; because whether she needed her sleep or not, his gut was dropping rapidly and he possessed the disturbing feeling that something was wrong. _

_Something was terribly, terribly wrong._

The first thing Jane became aware of was the feeling of someone punching him repeatedly in the head. But his senses slowly stirred, one by one, and he was able to directly link the torture to one of the worst headaches he'd had in a long time. A constant throbbing, as if his heart was in his head, and he squeezed his eyes shut in a failed attempt to block out the pain. His mouth unbelievably dry, like cardboard; the sunlight, too, refusing to co-operate, burning the majority of the back of his neck. He shifted his head slightly and as a fresh wave of agony ripped through him, he attempted to drag a hand to his temple. However, when a warm, steady hand refused to be denied, his heart skipped a beat and he threw his eyes open, ignoring the additional sting the sudden movement brought to his mind.

When the first thing he encountered was a mess of dark hair, remnants of his dream began to filter through and he wondered dazedly whether maybe it hadn't been a dream. After all, it was morning, he was in a bed, and a female's body was currently tangled with his. The scenarios were all too similar for the bleak hope coursing through his veins to overlook, and hence he allowed it to be so. The logical fragment of his mind repeatedly warned him not to ignore the facts, but he was content with shutting it out; content until he made his one fatal mistake of inhaling gently.

The earthy scent of nutmeg from his dream cracked through him like a whip. A subtle yet overpowering aroma of chocolate, combined with a hint of apples and the one ingredient that caused his entire body to become rigid and his breathing to crash to a stop.

Cinnamon.

Later, he would be somewhat proud of himself for possessing the mindset not to catapult himself out of the bed and run for his life. And he had never wanted to do anything so badly, but he knew that he'd wake her up; instead, he clamped his eyes shut and willed for it to be anything but real, a hallucination of sorts. But when she wouldn't disappear, he chose to place all and more of the blame on the events that led them here. And found that he couldn't because the last thing he remembered was sitting next to her at the slots.

Bravely ignoring that his head was swimming in pain, he forced himself back to the night before and tried desperately to recall anything that followed that moment. He felt like screaming when the only new thing to surface was a shady recollection of Lisbon's past, before the dialogue weakened into a blur. In any other situation, a thrill of triumph would cling to his skin with the uncovering of her secret; but before he could even realise this, the glint of his finger caught his attention. And as his eyes fell on his wedding ring, a terrifying wave of guilt crashed into him with all the merciless violence of a tsunami.

With this guilt careered a rapidly growing panic as, below the surface, he began to lose control. Endless shame overcame him swiftly, and as it did a sudden anger formed itself at the fact that Lisbon continued to sleep peacefully beside him. Part of him wanted to shake her awake, simply so she could share the guilt, but somehow he found the strength to restrain himself. This was never how it was supposed to be; they were never meant to so this. He didn't _want_ them to do this.

Slowly, cautiously and amazed at his composure, he began the daunting task of untangling himself from her. Daunting, because if she woke up now he had no idea what he'd do. His mind on anything but the fragrance radiating from her hair, he gently prised their fingers apart, all too sensitive to her thankfully consistent breathing, and carefully pulled his face back from her neck as he lifted the arm draped over her.

His conscious instructed him to cringe when, halfway across, he accidentally grazed the bare skin of her stomach. However, his nerves betrayed him and sent a shiver down his spine in reaction to the sudden warmth. Suddenly, without indication or warning, self-loathing settled itself in his gut and he made no effort to defend himself from the undeniable fact that this could very well be considered an affair. He was _cheating_. How? How the _hell_ could he do this to Annie? No longer partial as to whether Lisbon was conscious or not, he all but leapt out of the bed.

Hands shaking uncontrollably, he stood silently, simply watching her. Waiting bitterly for the rocky creaks of the mattress to drag her roughly from her alcohol-induced sleep, and refusing to acknowledge the dramatic increase of his headache. But despite this sudden movement, she merely stirred slightly, before falling back into the depths of her pillow, breathing softly. One half of him hated her for being a heavy sleeper, but the other half realised his opportunity, and it rose to dominate him as he rounded the edge of the bed.

Jane's vest, pants and shoes lay in a wrinkled pile on the floor. He dressed as quickly as the situation would allow, his gaze never wandering from her face, anticipating the fluttering of her eyelids that defied all odds and never came; meanwhile, denying acknowledgement as to what clothes on the floor signified that they'd done.

Fully dressed, he turned without a second thought and headed for the door; fuelled with the impulse to be anywhere but there; the doorknob miraculously turning in silence, and he hesitated, door half-open, to sweep the room in search of evidence of his presence. He possessed no notion of why his gaze flew straight to Lisbon; nor why the image suddenly flashed across his mind of her fingers weaving gently through his, not five minutes ago now. And his panic eased ever so slightly as he witnessed a hypnotic smile tug pensively at the corner of her mouth; a small shred of his conscious remembering the searing warmth of her skin with an unexpected wistfulness…but the remainder of him, realistic, and a fresh wave of self-hatred coursed through him, causing everything else to fade into oblivion.

And so, he left.

* * *

Teresa Lisbon was thrust into consciousness by the sunlight beginning to singe her cheekbones; idly, her eyes quivered open to an onslaught of colour, and she was struck by the familiar drowsy confusion as to where she was. But as the various patterns and shades gradually began to distinguish themselves, a mass of baby blue presented itself and the case came galloping back. Galloping, definitely; she could literally feel the pounding of hooves against the base of her skull. She bleakly judged it to be a migraine, more powerful than yesterday's and with the added element of what she would bet on being alcohol, due to her dry mouth and the slightly odd feeling that she'd slept longer than usual. Rolling over to check the watch draped nonchalantly in the corner of her eye, she wasn't surprised at the relief she felt that they were going home today.

Her right arm stretched across the mattress, she encountered a sudden and unexpected section of warmth and a dazed perplexity clouded her thought process. Her heart began to beat the tiniest bit faster as her brain produced the logical reason for the evidence…it was almost as if someone had laid there beside her all night…she inhaled deeply in confusion, and then gasped loudly as the awakening of her sense of smell hurled a scent so horribly familiar into the deep pit of her stomach. It attacked her senses from every imaginable angle; overpowering warmth combined with the damned tea that he loved so much. He was everywhere; she was surrounded by him, endlessly surrounded.

What the hell had Jane been doing in her bed?

Lisbon vaulted herself to an upright position, her heart sprinting, half expecting to see him sitting at the edge of the bed with an amused grin. But before she could decide on a reaction to the room being empty, blood rushed harshly to her head and she rushed a hand to her forehead, wincing as the room began to spin. No trace of Jane, and yet she now knew without a doubt that he'd been there at some point. As the spinning subsided, she continued to reach for her watch and regarded it with a strange sigh a moment later, when it informed her that she was very close to running late. She knew she should be significantly more worried by this, but as she set the watch on the bed and stood shakily, the only emotion she found she could conjure was bewilderment.

Stepping under the scorching jets of the shower, a steaming frustration was added to her confusion as she discovered that the alcohol she'd consumed last night had virtually erased most, if not all, of her recollections. Holy crap, she must have drunk a lot. She could remember entering the casino, could remember finding Jane and reluctantly introducing him to yet another fragment of her past that he was never meant to know. Lisbon tilted back her head and parted her mouth to soothe her dehydration; as water streamed gently into her mouth, she also recalled what he'd admitted to her, and a tinge of lenience trailed her spine.

Fastening a towel around her, the hazy audio of a conversation suddenly began to filter through; she felt confident enough to translate the voices as being hers and Jane's, but as to the topic of conversation, she was clueless. Although, as she dressed as quickly as her hangover would allow, she got the feeling that it had been something to do with the slot machine he'd been using.

Claiming a painkiller from her packed bag and swallowing the vile thing dry, Lisbon closed her eyes for a moment, contemplating if she could handle acting as if nothing had happened. As if it had been a normal night. Part of her wanted desperately to believe that it had been; and yet both her common sense and her gut told her with absolute assurance that it wasn't. Her bafflement increased noticeably when she wondered if, in fact, she actually wanted answers to the questions she would rather not ask. Did she want to know what had happened? She was a naturally curious person; she liked to know things, and so the general answer to a question such as this would be yes. She eventually chose to make her decision based on his reaction, and in any other circumstance she would have laughed at herself.

As if using a Jane method on Jane would work.

The team was waiting for her in the hotel lobby-impatient and incredibly relieved-and she would have scolded them for their immaturity, had she not been feeling the same way herself. She forced herself to stride over confidently and with authority, as always, and shoved a half-smile on her face as she approached.

"You can at least not look so happy," she greeted them bluntly, aware of her hypocrisy but needing something controlling to say.

"Sorry, Boss," Rigsby replied, although his grin refused to fade and it became increasingly evident that he wasn't sorry at all. Lisbon observed him for a moment, inwardly amused at his childness, before it came to her attention that Van Pelt, too, could barely keep still, shifting her weight constantly from foot to foot as she glanced at Rigsby, smiling. And Cho? She turned to him and realised that his demeanour was as close to happy as she'd ever seen it. It was incredible, what two nights interstate could do to her team. The irony of it was not overlooked; one would think that they would have had _fun_, working in Vegas…

And with a sudden intake of shock, Lisbon realised what she was doing. She was _ignoring_ him; worse than pretending nothing had happened, worse than confronting him. What was she, sixteen? Anger resided in her momentarily at her awkwardness, and she wrenched her eyes off the floor with the ambitious intention to address him. It was a second or two before she realised that blue-green carpet still dominated her vision, and another second before she realised that she simply couldn't. She couldn't look at him, for a reason that she was too agitated to ponder.

"Where's Jackson?" Van Pelt questioned, blissfully unaware, or so it seemed, of the emotion that had to show somewhere on Lisbon's expression. The entire team, minus one, was thankfully oblivious to anything but their return home.

"Who cares?" Cho challenged unexpectedly, and Rigsby's grin widened. "Let's get out of here." Lisbon judged the numbness of her senses to be similar to that she'd felt in the casino, though her mind was decidedly more aware of her actions as she drifted behind her team toward 'LAVA's entrance. She caught a flash of blonde in the top corner of her sight range, and swallowed hard as she closed her eyes.

_Did she want to know?_

But before she could advance any further on her decision making, she could suddenly smell detergent and her senses informed her that she'd walked into someone. Throwing her eyes open, she discovered that said someone was accompanied by a broom, and she judged him to be a janitor; with the intention of apologising, she opened her mouth hurriedly. But a strange expression of recognition crossed his face, and she hesitated questioningly.

"Hey, it's you!" the man exclaimed, grinning widely to expose a crooked smile and yellowing teeth. Lisbon faltered; whatever she'd stored as a possible response to his sentence was now entirely useless.

"Excuse me?" was all she could invoke.

"How's your hangover doin'?" he suddenly asked, half concerned, half highly amused, and her eyes widened as she stared at him in absolute shock. How the hell did he…_hang on_. She took in his appearance, his voice, his personality, and something unrecognisable pierced at the back of her mind. She'd seen him before. And judging by his words, they'd met last night; Lisbon gulped subtly, she hoped, and inhaled.

"How did you know…"

"Ma'am," the man informed her seriously, "you can't be that drunk and _not _feel it in the mornin'. Ain't possible." And with this remark, he laughed as if something were hilarious; a faint glow of embarrassment filled her as he tipped his hat dramatically and turned to continue sweeping, Lisbon was unable to move her gaze or her feet for a good few seconds as she gaped. _What the hell had she done?_ Slowly turning, she eventually tore her gaze from the back of his head to a sight that, without warning, stained in her both the tingle of anticipation and the cold rush of fear that had somehow always been there, lurking just below the surface.

Jane stood utterly motionless, his gaze plastered to the janitor behind her, or so she assumed; whoever he was focused on, it wasn't her. The rest of the team had, thankfully, exited the building. His expression was, she decided shakily, a bitter assortment of both disbelief and something much, much darker that almost reminded her of the effect that Red John had on his demeanour. His fists were clenched, she noticed; his mouth set in a grim smile, his jaw set. His eyes humourless as they refused to waver from their sights; and with the sudden realisation that she could look at him after all, came a rush of confidence as she realised that this was deemed to be her only syncopated opportunity.

"Jane, look at me." The words came from nowhere Lisbon could comprehend; blunt, direct and so much colder than she'd expected them to be. It took a long moment for him to react, to the point where she wondered if maybe he hadn't heard; but then his head tilted slowly, and she gasped softly as she was battered by one of the iciest stares she'd ever witnessed Jane give. And she wondered bleakly if maybe he knew slightly more than she did; her confidence shattered to pieces, she forced herself to continue.

"Do you know this man?" there was no point in indicating whom she was referring to; he glanced to the right of her for a millisecond, before returning to her face and remaining silent. She swallowed and tried again.

"Do you have any idea what happened last night?" Still no answer, and the silence angered her. Damnit, he worked for her; it was written over every inch of the contract that he had to comply with her orders, and she considered these instructions to be simple, even for him.

"_Jane!_"

"No, I don't." The sound of his voice, eerily calm, caused her to settle slightly; at least she'd got him talking. His response inflicted both disappointment and a strange relief, and she decided to arrange her previous question into something more specific, stepping forward as she spoke slowly.

"Well, can you remember anything about…"

"Why?" Jane's sudden challenge startled her, and she glanced up, taken aback by the hostility in his tone. "What's so important," he almost hissed, "about recalling what happened?"

"Because I want to know." Her immediate retort startled her, and she realised that she truly could not handle the thought of letting this go without answers. She really did want to know.

"You have no idea what you want," Jane notified her harshly, and with that said he turned toward the entrance, ignoring the curious stares of the few people surrounding them, including the clerk. The sight caused her to seethe; he assumed, just because he knew what everyone was _thinking_, he was better than her…and with that thought, an idea slowly formed itself in her mind, and she acted on it before he could escape.

"Hypnotise me," she proposed to the back of his head, and he paused as she went on carefully, "put me in a trance, do your crap. _Make me remember._"

"No," Jane refused without any hesitation, and suddenly her newly achieved calm burst into flames, and a lividness ascended her stomach as her eyes flashed.

"_No_?"

"For God's sake, Lisbon," he whirled around to glare at her, "it's a two-letter word. How hard is it to understand?"

"How hard is it for _you_ to understand?" she fumed. "_I want to know!_"

A short silence ensued, and it appeared that perhaps Jane had reached the always talked about, but never seen point where he'd run out of comebacks. Eyes glued to hers, he blinked once, and in a millisecond he'd gathered every one of his emotions and consigned them to his eyes. The anger that had always been there, the frustration, the darkness, the coldness, an indescribable and unexpected wave of fear; and a sudden array of guilt that had plunged deep below the surface to puncture her before Lisbon could even begin to comprehend it. She abruptly grew all too sensitive to the stares of the clerk and various hotel residents, and withdrew, deflated, her eyes locked onto his, despite that it hurt. Jane then uttered two words, before turning again, this time reaching the doorway and vanishing before she could reply. Not that she could.

"I don't."

Lisbon had never thought that a mere two words could leave her so wounded.

_Don't forget to review! Your thoughts are always welcome.  
Oh, and if you think that the story's almost over, then you can certainly think again.  
Chapter 10's another Lisbon/Jane one. See you next Sunday!_

_Jess xx_


	10. Answers

**Last chapter! Thanks so much to everyone who's reviewed. I could have continued this story but I think I'll just leave it here. **

**I don't own the Mentalist or anyone associated with it.**

**Chapter Ten: Answers**

* * *

To the innocent bystander, Patrick Jane would appear apathetic as he lay on his couch, his back to the leather and his arms folded nonchalantly behind his head; beside him on the floor, an empty cup of tea. His eyes were closed, and if he were feeling even remotely observant he would be ever conscious of Van Pelt seated at her desk behind him, documenting the very last of both the Tyler and the Donovan cases; of the absence of Cho and Rigsby, who had gone out for pizza. However, this barely bothered to register, for all the room in Jane's mind was currently occupied by the fact that it had been two days.

Two days, and she'd barely looked at him once.

Jane arched his back to stretch, and as he did he reluctantly recalled the mind-numbing tension of the five hour drive back from Vegas. Though the alcohol remaining in Lisbon's system was more than enough to prevent her from driving, she'd taken the wheel nonetheless and her undeniable hostility had held him captive in the back seat for most, if not all, of the journey. He'd hoped (a little foolishly, on reflection) that the tension might ease upon their return home; alas, it had followed them through the CBI, up the elevator and into the bullpen, where it currently resided, so thick that one would have to hack it with a knife many times before even scratching it.

He hadn't decided whether or not it was a good thing to know how to make the tension fade. Because he had become all too aware of what she wanted, despite the consequences, and he could hardly blame her for the way she was programmed. He wasn't angry at her anymore-the strange rage had departed the moment he found it stung that she didn't look at him because she couldn't. Because if she ever did glance at him in passing, all he would ever remind her of were the lights of a casino and a night that continued to elude them both.

Jane allowed his eyes to flicker open gently as the ceiling rushed to meet him, and he contemplated. Would he be able to accept the truth, if it turned out that they truly had done what the evidence screeched? Could they ever return to the innocence of the light-hearted banter that he subconsciously seemed to thrive on? He wasn't all too sure that they could, because for all the ceiling could tell him, it refused to explain to him this. And so, he took a deep breath and sat up slowly, the bullpen swimming into focus as his uncertainties taped themselves to the front of his mind.

He was tired of questions, he'd realised suddenly.

He wanted answers.

Jane stood dilatorily, cautiously, and before he could achieve the common sense to stop himself he slowly made his way across the room. Van Pelt glanced up curiously, momentarily distracted from her work as he passed. As her questioning expression edged out of his peripheral vision, a glint of confusion caught his eye and he knew without looking the exact moment where it changed. Where it morphed rapidly into utter disbelief upon discovery of the office he was forcing himself toward.

He was overcome with the urge to barge in without warning, as he always did; however, the situation restricted him to raising a slightly shaky hand to the door and knocking softly three times, the action somewhat foreign. When she instructed him to come in, he reached for the doorknob and, rotating it slowly, thought of anything except what he was about to do.

To remark that Lisbon was surprised to see him would have been a severe understatement, though the fact that he'd knocked had probably thrown her off. It took her a moment to glance up from what was most likely the last morsel of paperwork pertaining to the Tyler case; another moment for the pen she held to fall through her fingers and clatter to the desk, and for her gaze to snap suddenly and automatically onto his in what was her first acknowledgement of his existence in almost forty-eight hours. Eyes wide, expression somewhat nervous and lips slightly parted in shock, though she refused to grant him any kind of a verbal reaction and he knew all too well that it was because he was the one who needed to speak first.

The intensity in her stare more than he could take, he disconnected it to turn and close the door gently, the abrupt thud rushing his eyes to the floor as he swallowed hard. Turning back toward her, he felt rather than saw the addition of expectation to her demeanour as he kept his eyes glued to his feet. A long moment passed, before he cleared his throat and opened his mouth for the first time.

'I'll hypnotise you,' he uttered softly.

Jane tore his face upward to her features, wary of her reaction and faintly startled by the strange ghost of a smile that danced across her mouth before disappearing without a trace. The shock was less subtle now, rearing to hold its own against both the awkwardness and the sudden fear, and he dreaded for a moment that perhaps she'd changed her mind. But there was nothing in her gaze to suggest a hasty defence as she looked at him and inhaled.

'Where?' she asked simply, and the realisation that they were talking rationally for the first time in days allowed his breathing to slow down, despite the topic of conversation. He pondered her question before taking a hesitant step forward.

'Your choice,' he told her, knowing that she would feel more comfortable if she were in control. 'Somewhere quiet. Private.'

'My car's free,' Lisbon suggested tentatively, and he initially considered it to be a joke, a rather weak attempt to lighten the atmosphere; but then she failed to smile, which she would have had she been anything but serious. An expectant silence ensued to which he nodded and the same half-smile drifted across her mouth, beginning to haunt him as she stood. Jane turned to tug the door back open and held it open for her as she passed, the horrible awkwardness hitting him as her perfume did; holding his breath inconspicuously, he shut out his memories of _that_ morning. Evidently, it didn't help to remind himself of the warmth of human skin when he was so desperately trying to redraw the line between them.

For all her strong-willed morals of courtesy and respect, Van Pelt could barely stifle a gasp as they passed her on the way to the elevator, and he didn't blame her. However, he had no idea what to make of her apparent relief; as they descended downward to the ground floor, neither of them saying a word, he eventually told himself that he'd imagined it. They'd reached her car within a minute, the parking lot relatively empty, which he knew without a doubt that the both of them were grateful for. Lisbon fumbled with her keys for a moment, before the locks clicked upward and she let herself into the back seat. A thought suddenly occurred to Jane, and a hazy question formed itself in his mind as he hesitated; maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Nonetheless, he tossed this uncertainty aside and reached for the handle on the opposite side of the car, ducking his head to avoid the roof and settling himself on a 45 degree angle to where Lisbon had pulled her knees to her chin, back pressed against the window. And he discovered all of a sudden the dreaded answer to his question, which was yes.

Yes, the car did smell like her.

He automatically began to breathe through his mouth as he pulled the door closed behind him, shadows of Monday morning escaping their restraints to plague him, and his mind half-succeeded in violently shoving them back into their box as he wrenched his focus back to the present. Lisbon had wrapped her arms around her legs, pulling them closer defensively and he immediately understood. Her next action, though, he comprehended a little less.

'You don't have to do this, you know,' she told him suddenly, her gaze boring into the back of his brain as he glanced at her, and he wondered again if she'd changed her mind. But her green eyes glinted an unfamiliar tenderness, and it slowly occurred to him that she was giving him a choice.

'I need to.' The reply was out before he'd fully processed it, and he realised with a start that his words were true. He couldn't handle the 'what-if's anymore; he really did need to know, despite how it might change things. It had to be somewhat better than their current relationship, anyhow; Lisbon appeared to be aware of this as well, a silent understanding painting itself thinly over her tenderness, and the now agonisingly familiar half-smile made yet another bittersweet appearance. Again, he anticipated the increase of it into a genuine smile, and again its refusal to do so made him angry.

'Close your eyes,' he began lightly, but Lisbon merely continued to stare at him, her soft expression denying that it was supposed to change. He repeated himself in what was very nearly a whisper, and she appeared to hear him this time as she jumped slightly in confirmation. A sudden flicker of fear surprised him, before their gazes broke for the first time since they'd entered the car and she complied with his orders. Jane took a deep breath, the radiant scent surrounding him all but forgotten as he opened his mouth.

Time to face the truth, whatever that truth might be.

* * *

_Teresa Lisbon was vaguely aware that she should not feel so utterly tranquil whilst descending wet, grotty stairs into a thick darkness, nor should that darkness be so appealing. She knew more than anyone that it went against her nature to be so bold-without a gun in her hands, at least-and a small voice awoke from the folds of her conscience to tell her this. But the voice was weak; unfriendly and barely audible, as if it were being strangled, and utterly insignificant in comparison to the voice that now held her every emotion on a dazed leash. Warm, soft and wonderfully familiar, though she couldn't quite place it and the gentle words in her ear made no direct sense, and yet granted her the confidence required of every step deeper and deeper into the abyss below._

_As her shoes scuffed the very last step, the darkness suddenly abated to the point where she could decipher the door of an elevator. It seemed oddly out of place as opposed to the steps behind her; or at least, the steps that __were behind her, as she turned to discover that they'd faded into indistinguishable shadows. She felt as if perhaps she should be wary of her surroundings, but the voice whispered soothingly in her ear and she didn't'feel the urge to question it. Her heartbeat steady and her breathing more even than it rationally should be, she looked on with an unexplainable neutrality as the light above the door suddenly flashed orange, and the grates parted to let her in._

_The elevator she and Jane had used on Sunday morning rose to meet her boldly, and as she departed from solid ground the beautiful voice informed her that it was necessary for her to be here, in this very compartment, though she couldn't quite remember why and she found that she didn't care. Eyes drinking in the sight of the walls as the door groaned to a close behind her, it was a moment before it occurred to her that she shared the confined space with two other people; another long moment before she recognised their identities._

_Jane balanced in his shoes approximately six feet away; balancing due to the raven-haired woman clinging to his back, her arms around his neck as she giggled incessantly in his ear. As Lisbon gradually became accustomed to the bizarre concept of watching herself from afar, she realised that they could not see or hear her, and she was startled at how quickly and quietly she accepted this fact. Her fatigued conscience warned her drowsily that she should have possessed some sort of a reaction to the alcohol-induced glaze spread evenly over her eyes, or to her childishly giddy behaviour. Most of all, the fact that Jane was _carrying_ her. But these observations were mere fragments, insignificant details in her mind, which she quickly brushed aside in favour of the slight dizziness that informed her that the elevator was taking them up._

_After a minute or two, during which Jane nearly dropped her and the following fit of laughter sounded somewhat eerie, the elevator doors parted to the fifth floor. As Jane stumbled out onto the c__arpet, a fleeting sense of terror overwhelmed her, as if the thing that she wanted was leaving with them, and with the voice's support she stepped out and followed them._

_But with every step, a slow dread began to rise in her which only grew stronger as she slowed; her and Jane suddenly began to blur up ahead, and as a cold panic reared to break through the surface, the walls around her began to fade, blue to white. She possessed the sudden urge to run for her life in the opposite direction, but her feet were bolted to the floor and she found that she could only stand and watch as the scene disintegrated before her._

_And suddenly, the voice swept over her with a beautiful grace__, and Lisbon closed her eyes as her heartbeat began to slow and her dread was reduced to a dull thud. She opened her eyes a moment later to discover that her surroundings had slid back into focus, and that her and Jane had managed to stagger quite a long way ahead. And so, keeping this dull thud at bay and then ignoring it, she hurried after them. _

_She reached the door to her hotel room at the same time they did, listening as they argued over where the key was and wincing when she claimed that it was __'his' room and that he should know. Jane told her in a slurred voice that maybe she should look anyway, just in case, and a few long moments later the door was unlocked with shaky hands and he nudged it ajar with his forehead. They began to zig-zag slowly across the small adjoining living room, and Lisbon wandered in after them timidly; wary because she'd forgotten what was so important for her to see and yet she knew that she must see it. The door to the bedroom was wide open and Jane leant heavily against it, muttering something unintelligent. Sensing her chance, she maneouvred around them and entered the room before she could stop herself._

_As Jane crookedly closed the gap between them and the bed, a__ sliver of fear added itself to her demeanour, and the voice calmed only the surface as this emotion wasn't so simple to destroy. She watched as he turned back toward the door, the back of his legs to the mattress as he evidently waited for her to release her grip and fall backward. After she failed to comply, he laughed and stumbled over his light-hearted whine that she was heavy, and her giggle in response was, apparently, gravity's cue._

_The fear, the dread, the panic; every emotion the voice had smothered before returned to the surface, but more powerful and much more rapid than its previous attempt as their noses shifted to linger within inches of each other. Lisbon wanted more than anything to drag Jane out of the bed and shove him toward the door, but had the feeling that it wouldn__'t work, nor would screaming at herself in the vain hope that she would realise what she was doing. And so, she could only watch helplessly as she slowly leant down and pressed her lips to his; the voice rising to once again act as her shield but deemed useless as she began to, nevertheless, lose control…_

_Her heart exploded frantically in shock as he undoubtedly returned the kiss, lifting a hand to intertwine his fingers through her hair, and all other details lay invisible as the edges of her vision began to blur. An unexpected warmth__ suddenly coarsed through her shoulder, as if someone had laid a hand there soothingly; however, it might as well never have been there for all the calm it brought…the voice strengthened again, but its tone was now slightly sinister and she found that she'd lost the ability to trust it…it had lied to her, it had told her that she was safe, but she sure as hell didn't feel safe anymore…the unfolding of the scene, agonisingly slow, the walls once again beginning to fade, but this time slower, more haunting, as if it wanted to torture her. She watched as her arm, blurring steadily into nothingness, wrapped itself around his neck as she deepened the kiss…and as her other arm trailed down to the top button on his vest, she felt a pull at her spine, as if someone were trying to drag her backwards, and the scene finally closed its doors on her as she cried out at herself to realise that it was _Jane_… it was _Jane_…_

And, with a sudden lurch, Lisbon eyes blinked open to the back seat of her car.

The first thing she noticed was Jane's hand pulling back from her shoulder, the lack of warmth sending a drowsy chill along the tip of her collarbone. The second thing she noticed was his eyes; wide and strangely nervous, and undoubtedly telling her in an instant what she wanted to know. He knew. Either he'd translated it from her expression, or she'd unconsciously narrated for him. As he'd done for her, she realised, as she finally plastered the voice to a face; as she did, she became aware of the uncomfortable silence that hung in the air like smoke. She looked down to fiddle with her hands, and opened her mouth without the slightest clue what to say, but knowing that she had to say something. Anything.

"At least it worked this time." Whether her reference to the McTeir case fully registered or not, she found herself simply relieved that the silence was broken, and looked up with a new-found confidence to find Jane's eyes trained to the movements of her hands and his response nonexistent. Forcing herself through the stubborn tension, she tried again, this time with a more direct approach.

"Well…"she began, "….we have two options." She waited with an unexpected patience for Jane to lift his gaze before continuing bravely. "One…" she swallowed hard, "…we leave the car and forget it ever happened…"

"Two?" Jane's sudden question threw her off, despite that it was straightforward, and it took her a moment to realise that it did so because the answer was complicated. Of course, option number two would be that they…no. No, neither one of them would ever care to consider the alternative…she had her job, he had Red John and everything in between faded to oblivion. It always did, and it always would. And for God's sake, as she'd been constantly reminding herself, he was _Jane_, and that was hardly likely to change.

The look in his eyes reminded her of a muted version of what she'd seen back at 'LAVA', and as she detected what she thought was regret, she instead found it to be guilt and suddenly realised its cause. Oh. _Oh._ Of course; his wife. With his wedding ring on, one might think that he was betraying her, and once the thought had settled itself in his mind there was no point in trying to dig it out, though she'd tried many times in other situations. And so, incidentally, there could not possibly be an option number two. There could only ever be option…

"One." Lisbon's first thought was that she'd spoken aloud, but then she remembered who she was in the car with and realised that he must have been reading her as she attempted to read him. Was she really that predictable? Once again, Jane had used a one-worded sentence, but this time she had a response, fuelled by both his demeanour and his file as she opened her mouth.

"One," she breathed, condemning them both by her compliance and yet certain that it was the right thing to do. Jane stared at her for a moment longer before leaning back to rest his back against the seat, and apparently had decided to increase his vocabulary to something that didn't involve numbers.

"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," he stated in a theatrical tone, and it was more of a sideways comment than anything. He smirked, though it didn't quite reach his eyes and Lisbon couldn't figure out whether it was supposed to make her smile too.

"Yeah," she muttered, the word the best that she had in terms of a relevant reply. Lowering her eyes, it eventually occurred to her that the awkward silence had resumed dominance, and she felt like screaming. The car suddenly felt much too small, much too confined, and she was abruptly all too aware of Jane's presence, wishing more and more with each passing second that she had the words to take things back to the way they were three days ago. To send the tension away for the very last time. But she had no words, least of all words that wielded this kind of power, and a few moments later, she gave up. Remaining in the car longer than necessary was proving unable to substitute.

Focusing intently on the door handle, mainly to distract herself, she reached out a hand and barely thought twice when it refused to budge. Jane's eyes burning into the back of her head, she sighed softly and flicked the lock upward, straining to recall when she'd locked the door…but then the high-pitched wail of the car alarm shattered the silence, and she cursed loudly as she fumbled for her keys. She knew they'd be with her; she'd had to unlock the car and she'd stuffed them into her pocket as she'd settled herself against the window. But she'd searched both her jacket pockets without success, and as the shrill whine seemed to get louder in her ears, she suddenly realised that she'd again forgotten that she wasn't alone…

Lisbon turned to glare angrily at the man beside her.

"Jane!" she close to shouted over the screech.

"What?" he asked innocently, his unaffected calm making her all the more furious.

"Give me back my keys," she said sternly.

"I don't have them."

"Of course you do."

"You honestly think I would steal your keys while you were hypnotised?"

"Honestly? I'm wondering why you haven't stolen my car as well." Jane persevered with the façade for a few moments longer (years to her, and he continued to be oblivious to the alarm) until he evidently grew bored with it, or so it seemed.

"You know, you can learn a lot about a person from their keys," he informed her, conjuring hers in question and disconnecting their gaze to perform a closer inspection.

"That's wonderful. Give them…"

"Yours, for example…"

"_Jane_!" she yelled, and her rapid increase in volume finally seemed to break through the alarm and reach him. He lifted his gaze to acknowledge her and perhaps to observe her again, and she thought he would continue his apparent quest to reunite her with her headache until he sighed in overdue surrender and tossed her the beloved keys. Lisbon pressed an eager finger to the unlock button and closed her eyes in relief as a wonderful quiet surrounded her. Bliss. The peace was fleeting, though, as a moment later she turned back toward Jane, all her anger returning.

She'd intended to tell him to get the hell out of her car, but hesitated when she saw the look on his face, the soft smile at the edge of his mouth. She wanted to meet it with a glare, but then she realised why he was smiling and she found that she couldn't hold back the grin that spread steadily across her face. Jane was beaming at her now, seeming particularly satisfied with her expression and she found that she really didn't care what he did anymore. Because the tension had finally faded. The terrible feeling of his burning presence and having no words was suddenly gone, and a beautiful relief washed over her.

"Blue," Jane said suddenly.

"What?"

"Your lanyard." He pointed to her keys. "It's blue."

"So it is," Lisbon replied, turning to lean her right side against the back seat and giving him a genuine smile. "Care to tell me what that means?"

Yes, Jane manipulated her on a daily basis. Yes, he caused most, if not all, of her headaches, and there were times when she really hated him. Times when she was simply sick of him, times when she felt like his mother and times when she found herself terrified of him. But then there were times, like now, when she looked at him and saw no mind tricks or arrogance or Red John; she only saw a man who'd cheered her up at his own expense, and this side of him, rare though its appearance was, was her main excuse for keeping him around. Lisbon knew without a doubt that the tension they'd been floundering in for the past two days was entirely her fault; she'd chosen to face the casino, she'd drank way too much, _she'd_ kissed _him._ Something in her mind informed her logically that he was to fully blame for the alarm, the current pounding in her ears, at least two thirds of the paperwork waiting for her in her office. And she vaguely wondered if that constituted as them being even or not.

But then she looked at him and realised, for the first time in a long time, that she didn't really care.

* * *

**Thank you so much for reading. Please review!**

**Jess :)**


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